# Hedgehog eating but still losing weight?



## Lyn013 (May 21, 2017)

My Blackie is about 8 months old, and his "normal" weight is around 400 grams. In the past couple of months his weight dropped to 370 grams, but I can't find anything wrong with him? 
He used to be fed on Orijen Cat & Kitten up until around October, when a friend told me it's a bit high in fat and made her cat fat. Then I switched to mixed kibbles including Go!(protein 31%, fat 15%), Gather(protein 30%, fat 16%), and Now Fresh (all from petcurean), kibble size is pretty tiny and Blackie seems to like them quite a lot! He's still eating pretty much the same mixed kibbles, but we ran out of Now Fresh so he's now having some Lotus Oven-baked for Cats (protein 35%, fat 15%), the kibbles are a bit big but we break them into halves and thirds and he eats them just fine; he just kinda picks them out, but will eventually eat them after he's finished the other kibbles. 
He eats about 6~8 grams of kibbles per day, and is a pretty avid wheel runner but only runs after we go to sleep, which means he has time to run on his wheel for like 6 hours daily. His poop is mostly normal but we have discovered slight traces of green poop on his wheel in the past two weeks, about once weekly. Where we live it's not as cold so his cage isn't being heated yet, but he does have lots of winter blankets and feel pretty warm whenever I touch him. He's not being lethargic because of the cold either, he's still pretty active at night. The only thing is that he's been drinking less water probably because he isn't sweating as much, but we make it up by giving him fruits like apples and pears.
As of now his weight is still steadily dropping, we're giving him a little bit more food but that doesn't seem to work very well since the extra food is just left in his bowl, and right now we're mixing another bag of Go!(protein 46%, fat 18%) in his feed, but not very much because of its high protein. Still observing to see how it turns out, but if he keeps losing weight we'll take him to the vet.
Anyone have similar experiences and might know what's going on or what other thing we can try?


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## nikki (Aug 28, 2008)

Is he starting to look underweight? It could be either that he was overweight from the high fat food and now is getting to a healthier weight or he needs to have a higher fat food to keep his weight steady.


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## Lyn013 (May 21, 2017)

I don't think he's looking underweight... Is he?
back view (he's kinda sitting in one photo):


side view:

belly view:


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## nikki (Aug 28, 2008)

He looks to be a good weight to me. I would just keep him on the food he's on now and keep tracking his weight. If he starts to seem underweight then just add in a bit of higher fat food to his mix.


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