# Update on Astrid's raw diet progress



## Amlinals (Jul 26, 2012)

Hi everyone, 
I haven't been on these forums in quite some time (thankfully because I haven't had any concerns with Astrid's health or behaviour) but I looked something up out of curiosity the other other day, ended up rereading a couple old threads today, and realized that it had been over a year since my last update on someone's thread, so I just wanted to make a quick post to let those of you who had been following our raw feeding progress know that our "trial" has now reached a year and a half, and she is still doing great! Not overweight, no dry skin, no concerns whatsoever, (except that she is fussy about the duck flavour and will hold out if I run out and try something else).
So it has been a solid year on exclusively Nature's Variety Duck Raw Bites, with sometimes meal worms and the occasional horn worm as treats. 6 months before that since she'd been off kibble completley and on raw, we had been alternating between nature's variety chicken and duck flavors and still trying veggies and fruits.
I'll be honest, it's primarily just the raw, I tend to go through slacker phases with the bugs, over the last several months the insects have ended up being more of a treat than the staple they used to be.
But i'm getting back into them the last couple of weeks. No reason, i prefer to feed them, i just got a little distracted and lazy i guess. She hadnt been into catching her crickets any more so i stopped with them, i'm planning on reintroducing my old habit of freezing them before feeding. She loves her mealworms, i just kept forgetting batches of them out of the fridge and had a lot die on me so i kind of stopped it for a while. But i'll be continuing with those regularly. She's had thr occasional hornworm the last few months as i've had lots of those around for my chameleon, so if i ended up with small ones she'd get them. Last week she had a couple butterworms (we haven't had those in quite some time as my store stopped carrying them. I have found another couple of sources and will be getting some more regularly for my chameleon, so she'll be getting those too soon. 
And the last thing I'll mention as it's a new development - last week she tried a pinky mouse and 2 rat pups for the first time (happened to end up with them on hand, deceased, intended for another critter) - and she instantly went posititvely bananas over them. I was surprised. And a little appalled, as she ate them under her blankies, and there were a few "bits" left stuck to the fleece. Lol.
As much as I respect the concept of a whole food diet for complete health and teeth cleaning purposes, it won't be something I offer regularly (I keep gerbils too, so it is very sad for me to view little rodent babies as food) , but maybe since she liked it so much, it could be a birthday or thank giving treat as a special occasion thing.
I only mentioned it for those who have in the past expressed concerns about their ability to chew chunks of raw meat or handle pieces of bone. Judging by her ability to down those two rat pups, I think we underestimate the capabilities of those pointy little mouths.  
I really don't have any new news to report, just updating the timeline to 1.5 years on the raw diet and still going strong with great success. 
If anyone else has started a raw diet with theirs in the last year, please share your results and diet plans with me.


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

Yay, thanks for the update!  I'm so glad to hear that Astrid's still doing great on the raw bites. There's been at least one or two other people that have started using those or at least offered them to their hedgies & gotten great reactions to them. Not sure if you'll have already seen this, but I've been keeping an updated sticky that includes links to threads people have going about their raw/home-made diets - http://www.hedgehogcentral.com/forums/12-diet-nutrition/23066-raw-home-cooked-diets.html The three after yours are all from the past year.  I added this to the sticky as well, I hope you don't mind!


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## Amlinals (Jul 26, 2012)

Yes I noticed that this morning, was happy to see the topic so centrally featured, and it was a handy way to find my old threads, Thank you.


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