New developements for the second half of 2023

It’s been half a year into 2023 and we’ve already done a lot of work in terms of blogposts and working on the basic care course and the genetics course. But we do have some new developements that will be implemented in the coming months, leading into 2024.

The wiki as it exists now, will be deleted permanently. We see the numbers are very low on those pages and people don’t use it as much as we’d expected. The basic care course will also cover all of the information needed for ethical husbandry, removing the need for the wiki to exist. Instead, we will make an overview of all of the species of hedgehogs and tenrecs with information about their natural habitats. The specific looks of these pages is uncertaint at this moment.

The basic care course will remain free of charge and is currently still being written. This will take some time as the information we want to display is a lot and takes a lot of time to write on a level that everyone can understand. The fact that care and housing guidelines vary so much per country also adds to the time we need, because we do want to do right by the animals and include as much information as we possibly can! So if you’re already enrolled, you might see that the next lesson is completely empty. This will be solved along the way as we will add content to the course contineusly. No worries! You have a lifetime access to the course, so you don’t have to miss out on anything.

The basic care course will be written as soon as the basic care course is completed. This course is about the very basics of starting a hedgery or a breeding herd for tenrecs. It includes various topics like the imporance of pedigrees and lineage tracking, why you should have a breeding goal in mind, how to come up with a name and more information about preparing the journey of becoming a breeder, but it will also include some deeper subjects. Risks of breeding, what to do when the young need to be handraised, how to socialize young hedgehogs and tenrecs and how to search for new owners are some of those subjects. But also the very basics of genetics and how to use genetics in your breeding journey.

There will also be a fourth online course coming: a basic fieldbiology course, explaining how you can use simple methods to observe and research hedgehogs in your own environment. Explaining how some countries protect hedgehogs and why you sometimes need permits or licenses to do fieldbiology. This wil be a paid onlince course and we expect it to air somewhere at the end of this year or at the start of 2024.

Apart from all of this news, we have some more exciting news to share… We’re bringing back books and ebooks! Since starting The Hedgehog Program, books and ebooks have always been a part of our education and currently there are no books in our shop. But this will change very soon. We are currently working on a hedgehog encyclopedia series where each book represents a different species of hedgehogs. The books in this series will be available per book, but also as a complete series. And we’re aiming towards publishing a children’s book about hedgehogs too!