Animal husbandry in hedgehogs
Last week we published a few polls on one of the biggest hedgehog groups on Facebook (Hedgehog Snoots, currently 30.144 members). Just for fun, but it turned out to be pretty great for an article. So here we go!
Which country are members from?
The first poll published was to ask in which country members lived. Not surprising, the United States of America had the leading position in this poll with a whopping 65%. Not surprising, because hedgehogs are very popular pets all throughout the USA, though some states banned the ownership of exotic hedgehogs or heavily regulated the ownership. On the second place was the United Kingdom with 14% which is also not very surprising, given the fact that they are very popular pets within the nation. And on the third position was Canada with a modest 11% of the votes. Despite the seeming popularity of exotic hedgehogs as pets in Canada, not all places have the ownership legalized and people tend to be more cautious into owning a hedgehog especially in colder regions of the country.
Other countries voted for -all with 1-2% of votes- are The Netherlands, Germany, Malaysia, Peru, Thailand, The Philippines and Finland.
More popular: males or females?
The second poll was a question involving the sex of the hedgehogs being held as pets. People were asked if they kept one male, one female, multiple males, multiple females or multiple hedgehogs of both sexes. The answers were pretty close, but still.. One females was the most chosen answer with 34% of the votes, wheras one male was on second place at 30% of the votes. The option of multiple hedgehogs of both sexes was chosen with 26% of the votes. Multiple males and multiple females was chosen an equal amount of times with each 5% of the votes. As expected, there’s not a whole lot of difference between sexes.
Kibble, raw meat or both?
The third and last poll was a question about the diets of pet hedgehogs. Do people provide cat kibble, dog kibble, mixed kibble, raw meat or raw meat and kibble? While the obvious winner of this poll was cat kibble with 80% of the votes, the rest of this poll was very interesting! 12% of the voters feed a mixed kibble diet, which might indicate some people using dog kibble in their mixes or mixing multiple cat kibbles. 8% of the voters feeed raw meat and kibble, which is probably due to people recommending to always feed at least a little bit of kibble even when feding a raw diet to avoid a lack of nutrients over time.
The options for raw meat and for dog kibble are not voted for at all!
What are your thoughts?
After seeing the polls and the outcomes of them, what do you think? Do you own more then one hedgehog and which sexes do they have? Do you feed kibble or raw meat and kibble? Let us know!
Article by Judith Dunkirk.
