# Another question about (stinky) poop!



## firephoenixla (Sep 13, 2010)

So I've been struggling for weeks with a hedgehog that literally stinks after she uses the bathroom until I airrate the room out for about an hour or so, and even then my room still smells like diarrhea... I have tried a few things over the weeks to cut down on poop smells, none of her foods has fish in the top 5 ingredients though there is fish in the top 11, I added a higher fat food to her diet, I added grape-nuts cereal for extra fiber, I stopped putting flaxseed oil onto her food, and I added Bene-Bac to her diet.. Before the Bene-Bac was added there were about 2 days that her poop didn't smell like a one-animal-barnyard, but then after the Bene-Bac its back to stinking up the entire upstairs of my house if I leave my room door open.
I know I've been having this problem for awhile so I was wondering a few things, are some hedgehogs just stinky? Do they just have stronger smelling poop than other hedgehogs because of their digestion process or something??? Because her poos look normal, brown solid and condensed well.. but maybe they're just stinkier then normal poops for some reason?
Also, I wake up Paprika around 8-9pm everynight and feed her her food mix, then I leave the room with the light off and take all of my work out of the room and come back about an hour to two hours later to clean her cage out since she does a majority of her pooing within an hour or so of waking up and wheeling. I was wondering, do other people experience cleaning their hedgie's cage immediately after they poo like this? or do most people sleep in another room so they wait until the next morning to clean it and by then the room the cage is in has airrated and the smell isn't so powerful so they don't think their hedgies poo smells so bad?
Basically I'm wondering if it smells so strong like baby diarrhea because I clean her cage immediately after she wheels or if Paprika really is a freak of hedgehog nature and just has stinky poo issues? :/


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## ThePliny (Jun 3, 2010)

poor Paprika! 
Sometimes I come home and Pliny's wheel stinks like hades, thus making my whole apartment smell like eau de hedgehog poop; when that is the case, I clean his wheel (and usually him) right away. We don't have the same consistent stink problem you seem to though. 
Maybe just leave her diet be for a while and see if it sorts itself out? I don't know. At least she seems to get most of it out in one fell swoop! :shock:


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## firephoenixla (Sep 13, 2010)

Oi! yeah, at least she gets a majority of it out before I go to sleep, but it still takes some ventilation to bring down the smell.. I'll give her another few weeks without changing her diet and see what happens I guess.. I wish there was something more I could do in the meantime


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## ChrisNolivia (Dec 3, 2010)

Not pregnant is she? I know my Alba's feces were RANK while she was pregnant, before that is was normal though.


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## firephoenixla (Sep 13, 2010)

Ugh god that would be a horrible surprise! haha, no I don't think she would be.. I got her from the breeder when she was 6 weeks old and I've had her now for about 2 1/2 months.. so I think even if something strange happened it would have sorted itself out by now.. I'm beginning to think she's just a naturally stinky animal... or maybe it's because I clean her cage out before I got to bed so I get to smell everything while it's fresh and run over on the wheel.. either way, I'm hoping as she gets older her stinky poo situation works out more :/


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## ChrisNolivia (Dec 3, 2010)

Well if it gets overbearing you can always just do what i did if you have a tall cage where they can't grab it. http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.j ... Id=2752676 , awesome product hardly any smell at all.


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## firephoenixla (Sep 13, 2010)

Really? you hang it in the cage and it cuts down on the smell? That's great! I'll get some! my only thing is that Paprika doesn't smell like urine, she smells like diarrhea so I wonder if this helps with that smell too???

I looked on the forum and saw someone mention Elimina but it wasn't confirmed or denied as being useful.. I also looked up deodorizers on Amazon and found this product, http://www.amazon.com/Marshall-8-Ounce- ... 764&sr=8-5

..hedgehogs eat cat food, do maybe this would work for them too??? I'm just so nervous about internal deodorizers because I really don't want to kill her or give her cancer or something when she is so healthy besides her diarrhea smell


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## EryBee (May 23, 2010)

I wonder if getting some kind of air filter to put next to her cage might help? My hedgheog Phinneus has some stinkers sometimes, but they only smell awful when they are fresh, and they rarely get so bad as to stink up the whole room. Sometimes I wake up and the smell from his night's wheeling hits me like a brick, but this is rare.


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## mtnwmn (Nov 25, 2010)

firephoenixla said:


> I looked on the forum and saw someone mention Elimina but it wasn't confirmed or denied as being useful.. I also looked up deodorizers on Amazon and found this product, http://www.amazon.com/Marshall-8-Ounce- ... 764&sr=8-5


The Good Odor Cats worries me because you use only three spritzes for cats, which are much more than three times larger than hedgehogs... so even if it were safe for hedgehogs, how would you get a small enough dose to be safe?


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## firephoenixla (Sep 13, 2010)

true, it would be tough to figure out how much for a hedgehog I guess.. maybe just one drop at a time in her water? I also found this one made for small animals, I wonder if it's any safer?
http://www.amazon.com/Marshall-Pet-Prod ... 66&sr=8-14
they listed the ingredients as well.. I can't say I've heard of any of them, do anyone else have any ideas? Deionized Water, Aspartic Acid, Threonine, Serine Glutamic Acid, Glycine, Alanine, Valine, Methionine, Isoleucine, Leucine, Tyrosine, Phenylamine, Histidine, Lysine, Argi Bicarbonate Hydraxypropryl Methellulose
I wish there was some natural way to do it.. like put a vitamin oil on her food or something :/


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## Kenzi (Aug 29, 2010)

I'm sorry if I missed it, but is her poop solid and dark colored? or is it actually loose diarrhea?


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## firephoenixla (Sep 13, 2010)

I'd say both, some of them are hard and dark and large, some are very small and round but dark, others are a lighter brown color and very mushy.. those are usually the ones that she runs in on her wheel and they everywhere in there.. she has quite a variety in the night! I've tried adding a higher fat food to her food mix, she eats only quality foods, and I've also added some grape nuts cereal in there over the past two weeks... I'm hoping something will give :/


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