# Mixed Diet



## SpikeMoose (Dec 9, 2012)

Eloise is a very small and picky little hedgehog, and getting her to eat enough has been a struggle. But I've finally settled on a diet that we're both really happy with, and now Milton and Eloise are both on it and doing fantastic. 
I use an ice cube tray to create pre-made portions, each of them gets a cube with a large table spoon of crushed kibble added to the side in case they are still hungry. Eloise will not eat full sized or round kibble. 








The top layer is 8-10 pieces of Natures Variety Raw Duck Bites. They're my hedgies favorite. Under that is a spoonful of sweet potato baby food, and then a tablespoon of turkey baby food. Under that is 2-3 mealworms. Then on the bottom I put little spoon of Blue Buffalo Turkey or Turkey&Chicken wet food. 
The food goes in a small stainless steel dish that won't harbor germs. Raw Bites seem to be the first to go each night, but I check around midnight before I go to sleep to make sure nothing raw has been left out, if so I toss it out. In the morning bowls get rinsed with wheels. I use mild dish soap for both  
My quill kids have really healthy skin, and are perfect little potato shaped hedgies. Their poop is healthy, no runs, funny colors, or constipation. Their activity is fantastic - little feet running all night. And they look very happy and healthy. I think this diet is working extremely well for us, and my vet has approved the changes and their health!
I started off giving each element of their new diet as treats and then slowly introduced more until they were very used to it, then I made the switch to making this the main part of their diet. 
The ice cube tray is a funny shape, narrow and long cubes, and it has a lid which snaps on. It works really well. 
I would talk to your vet about any big changes to diet, but for us this has worked really well.


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## ceopet (Sep 20, 2013)

Is Nature Variety good about NOT making abrupt changes to their formulas and things like that? ONe thing that is making me so annoyed with feeding kibble is that I've had to make changes to her diet twice already because the darn companies can't keep stuff straight! 

I think I may be trying this or Stella and Chewy's to with my girl. 

I cooker her up a batch of medium rare "meatballs" yesterday just to see if she'd eat them...I mixed a couple of ounces of spinich and apple.blueberry, and spinch baby food and she ate them both, pluse the wet hills ad I have been giving her (I am using it mix in with her meds but I hate wasting stuff so she gets a little every night) and she ate them in favor of her kibble, she only ate a couple pieces of it last night. So I think I may have a hedgie that would do well on this kind of diet.


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

Sounds awesome, and I'm glad your hedgies are doing so well on it!  I like that you still put out the kibble, just in case. Do you find that they eat much of the kibble, or not often? I'm going to add this thread to the Raw Diets sticky as well, if that's okay. I like having them all in one place for easy referencing, since it's so hard to find information on this kind of thing with hedgehogs right now.


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## SpikeMoose (Dec 9, 2012)

Awesome, I'm glad you think it'll help others. Milton munches on his kibble a little bit, but he never finishes what I leave out. He was eating about 2 tbs. per night, he's down to less than 1/2 tbs. I still leave him with a little over 1 tbs so he has the option to eat if he is hungry. Eloise rarely has more than a little crunch or two, but I offer her a little as well. Eloise has gained a bit of weight, which I wanted, and Milton has kept his normal weight. I was having trouble getting Eloise to eat a full meal and was to the point of syringe feeding her before this. Both are still active and drinking about the same amount of water, but I find their poop really healthy. Never super hard or dark, or green and stinky. 
I just want to emphasize monitoring them with your vet when you decide to try a new diet, and making sure that regular kibble is still available! 

Ceopet: I use the duck version of these, which also contain a bit of turkey. They're super convenient and I haven't had or heard of any problems with recipe changes.


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## lessthansign3 (Jun 1, 2013)

This looks fantastic  In fact, I think the next time I make a raw mix for Sebastian, I am going to do 1/2 duck, 1/2 chicken, because of what you mentoned about how nice their skin looks. I never thought about it before, but the extra oils in the duck probably really help keep their skin looking nice, especially in the winter.


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## shmurciakova (Sep 7, 2008)

I just bought some of the duck bites for my hedgies and offered them for the first time last night. I only gave them one each. Sola (my tiny - too skinny girl) gobbled it down like she never had food before! Daisy turned her nose up at it at first, but I left a frozen one in the cage for her to try and this morning it was gone!:grin:
I am not sure what ratio of this I am going to feed ultimately, and I still need to work on their veggie intake I think, but I would like to get Daisy off the dry food for sure as she needs to loose weight and I feel she is just getting too many carbs from the kibble.
Spike Moose - it seems like 8-10 pieces is a lot of food! I am afraid if I fed that many my already overweight Daisy would get too fat. I wonder how many "tbs" of dry food 8-10 pieces of raw is equivalent to?
-Susan H.


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## SpikeMoose (Dec 9, 2012)

I'm glad your picky girl likes the duck bites too! I keep a close eye on their weights, and 8 pieces works well for us... But they are both runner types who struggle to keep weight on. I did slowly add more bites over time to move them from kibble to mostly bites. I usually do a sweet potato or other veg. Baby food as another layer. The cubes are actually quite small, they're thin and a bit longer than regular ice cubes. 
If I were making this for an overweight hog I would remove the small wet food layer and only one mealworm. I've been told that limiting food is a bad option, but giving them a low fat diet and more exercise is better


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