# Water question and Bacon update



## kurai18 (Aug 31, 2009)

So my Bacon has been with me for 3 weeks now.. He is adjusting a lot better and now I realize my first initial fears were mostly just part of him adjusting to a new home.

I still have three or four concerns/questions though.

one, he barely drinks water and does not pee much. This is my main concern. It's not an adjustment problem because he drank more the first couple of days and now he barely does. He has both a dish and a bottle, and I give him filtered water. His previous owner said he just gave him tap water in the bottle. I also changed his cage lining to white to show off the pee stains better but I only find a little stain every 2-3 days.. he might be peeing in my Tshirts I give him to sleep with but they've always dry when I inspect them. He eats and poops fine though.

two, I read you have to watch out for green poop. His poop is pretty solid and LOOKS darkdark brown (almost black), but when I wipe poop residue off the wheel it wipes off green. Is this normal?

three, when he plays outside, he sometimes gobbles up little bugs before I can stop him. Austin is a city that doesn't use pesticides, and I never do, but this still worries me. Is there a good way to stop him from doing this or should I not let him outside?

four, i read that bathing him too much will give him dry skin. Is it still okay if I just rinse him off with water (no soap) about 2-3 times a week since he gets muddy after playing outside (It's been rainy the past week) and poopy after playing on his wheel?

Other than that Bacon is coming along awesomely. He barely huffs when I wake him up at his daily play time (7pm) and he doesn't curl up and spike up that much any more. He will grumble like an old car engine if I try to wake him up during the day though!
During his play time he rambles around in my garden and has great fun running between all the different plant pots. I also have a spot where I throw away food scraps (like bannana peels, corn husks, etc.) and that is his favorite annointing spot. I put up a little wire fence (vertical bars so he can't climb the wires) to prevent him from going into the deeper shrubs, and he persisted in poking his nose through EVERY SINGLE space all along the fence which was so cute and funny!
He is uber smart though, since if I block off a place and I firmly say NO! when he tries to climb over the block or something, he never attempts to go that way again, even after I remove the block.
He is eating A LOT more too.. During the first couple of days I was very worried because he only ate like 10-15 kibbles a day and barely pooped.. Now he eats about 30-40 kibbles, plus his daily treat of hardboiled egg yolk (he won't even consider the white part as food for some reason) or sometimes watermelon. He trusts my hand now so he doesn't even furrow his forehead when I move my hand near or away from him to give him treats. He still furrows it and huffs when I move a snackless hand. (Meanie.. he only likes the snacks, not my hand!=[)
And it is poop galore in his cage every morning.. I really need to get him litter trained..


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## kurai18 (Aug 31, 2009)

haha.. I just got an answer to my water question. lol
Right after I posted, Bacon started to bang something around and really raising **** so i ran over to see what he was doing and he was shaking and banging the water bottle against his cage! LMAO
he was one frustrated and thirsty hedgehog.. aww.. poor baby..
I guess he's been used to the water bottle so he's been ignoring the dish of water.. and maybe I don't have the water bottle at the right angle?? It should be able to give him enough water, right? And I did make sure it drips out water.. weird., oh well..
Other times he stil ignored the dish of water even if I put it right in his face to get him to drink it but I tried again and then turned the lights off, and he gulped down a whole dishful. Yay!


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## hedgielover (Oct 30, 2008)

Quigley doesn't drink a lot either. He had a health check at the vet that came back normal but it was just a general check up no serious investigating. I rarely find pee spots but it's hard to tell if he's peeing on his wheel and it's drying on the wheel before it drips off or if he's just not peeing. 

If you need to rinse him after playing outside you could just do a foot bath (a few inches of water) unless he is dirty all over. If he is really dirty all over I would add oatmeal or flax seed oil to the water (or use other solutions to combat dry skin) instead of just using plain water. 

I'm not sure about the dark green poop on the wheel but it could be an indication that he's having a slight reaction to something. Possibly the bugs from outside. The only way I know of to keep them from eating bugs is general supervision and pulling them away from bugs they try to investigate. Even though your city doesn't use pesticides bugs can carry other things like diseases from other animals and since hedgehogs are not vaccinated they are at risk of picking up these diseases. 

I hope my responses helped a bit. It sounds like you are doing a great job so far. I hope Bacon continues to make progress


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