# How are you crushing up kibble?



## TzusnHedgies (Sep 25, 2012)

I really think that cat food is too hard for a hedgehogs teeth. I saw where it wore down Chocolate Chip's teeth horribly. This morning I managed to crush up a small amount of food with the end of a screw driver. Yeah, it didn't go that well! It made a huge mess and took forever. With that food in smaller pieces, Caramel has been eating it! Before, he was eating a lot less of the full size kibbles.

So, yeah, I didn't find anything in my kitchen for crushing the kibble into a smaller size. Any ideas?!


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## SpiritWolves1 (Apr 5, 2012)

Line a plastic bag with paper towel and hit it with a meat tender mallet or use a spoon and another spoon, that's what I'd do.


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

Same as Spirit - I crushed Lily's kibble in a plastic bag, hitting them with a hammer. You can also buy a mortal/pestle from the store, I know I got a set at Meijer (like Walmart) for fairly cheap. I adored it for crushing kibble into powder for syringe feeding and mixing with baby food when she was sick, it really made my life easier. I think you can control a bit more how big the pieces end up with that too. Cat food can sometimes be too hard for babies and elderly hedgies, or ones with teeth problems. Sometimes it's the shape that they don't like too, or just that it's too big, not too hard.


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## hedgielover (Oct 30, 2008)

I found a tiny little food processor at Canadian tire for like $10 and I want to try it with cat food to see if it would work. I've heard of other people using food processors before.


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## TzusnHedgies (Sep 25, 2012)

Oh darn. I've used the hammer method before and it's not great either. The plastic bag ends up with a million holes, lots of crumb mess and every animal in the house is scared. I'll have to look up what a mortal/pestle is.


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

Yeah, I didn't like the hammer method much either. Too loud, too messy, and I went through too many plastic bags. This is kind of what my mortar/pestle looks like - http://www.walmart.com/ip/Fox-Run-Craft ... 0/19505607


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## LizardGirl (Aug 25, 2008)

We use an old-fashioned hand mill to "grind" our hedgie food into appropriate sized pieces. Just needs adjusted until you get the right coarseness of pieces coming out.  There are a few brands I feel are small enough to feed without needing to break the pieces up, but for most of the foods in our mix they go through the mill first.


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## TzusnHedgies (Sep 25, 2012)

Lilly'smommy- Thanks for the link! That's what I thought a mortar was, but never heard of pestle. That could definitely work.

Lizardgirl- where did you get your hand mill?


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## Christemo (Oct 5, 2011)

I crack my pepper corns using a large frying pan on the bottom and a slightly smaller one on top and just press. No banging, all crunchies.


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## LizardGirl (Aug 25, 2008)

I ordered mine online at Amazon.com. They have some cheap ones, but be careful because a lot of times they're not made well at all and the pieces are actually distorted so they won't grind properly (bad experience there). You could probably get away with a cheaper one but for us, we go through pounds and pounds of food, so we need something consistent.


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## Shell (Aug 23, 2012)

Even when crush, aren't the small peices still too hard for them? I'd prefer to crush instead of wetting the food. Always worried that I'll forget to take it out in the morning at it will sit all day mushy. I also find when Percy eats and the crumbled peices are left, he doesn't bother with them after. I guess if he's hungry enough, he'd get to those too?


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## Erizo (Jul 25, 2012)

I haven't noticed any trouble with my girl's eating whole kibble, but for other reasons I do crush one of her kibbles and 'hide' it in her baby food ration. For a 'light crush', just breaking full pieces into smaller pieces, the 'plastic bag and some-sort-of-crusher' is probably fine.

I would think that processors and mills are overkill for almost everyone. Unless you are grinding very large amounts, that's just way more than the job needs.

Because I am hiding the kibble in this situation, 'cracking' the kibble is not sufficient, so I use a small, ceramic mortar and pestle, about 1 3/4" tall by 1 1/2" wide at the base by 3" wide at the top. One quick pass crushes the kibble nicely, and a couple of more passes brings it down close to dust. The baby food is slightly 'gritty', but she doesn't seem to mind the difference. It remains her favorite food.

Kibble to dust literally only takes a few seconds.

Mortar and pestle:
http://dbwebdesign.com/mortar-pestle.jpg


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