# Hedgies and sixth sense.



## GoodandPlenty (Feb 4, 2012)

Sophie got a brand new cage this week; a big upgrade from C&C to wire linen-shelving. Every detail was planned out. The transition was quick as magic. She kept all her stuff and almost none of it even moved. But she knew that something big was happening *before* it even happened. When I got her out in the afternoon she was seriously unsettled; completely unlike herself. During her bath (which she handles very well) she bit me twice! Later, I had to retreat my hand from her hedgie sack because she wanted to bite me; was going out of her way to come at me! Seriously?! She somehow knew that the cage I took her out of wasn't going to be the cage that I returned her to.

She's had it two nights now. The first night, running tripled, food and water consumption dropped by half, and she wasn't at all happy to see me late-night. Yesterday she was back to normal during afternoon together time and late-night time. Still, running went from triple-time to quadruple-time; food and water remain halved. She was herself this afternoon. Will be interesting to see running time and food/water after tonight.


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## alexvdl (Dec 19, 2012)

I have a theory that wheel time goes up so much after a cage move is because the hedgehog thinks if they run far enough they'll get back to their old cage.


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## GoodandPlenty (Feb 4, 2012)

The week before the cage change, she ran just over 7 hours. The week following she ran just over 21 hours. Her behavior after that first afternoon and night, where she was so seriously unsettled, was totally normal after that. Her food and water plummeted for the first couple days, then eased back up day by day. Food is still down slightly. She lost 8 grams. Not much, but at only 322 grams, she doesn't have a lot of room.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the wheeling. She used to run 3 hours a night every night, but has trended down to not much over an hour. I don't believe that she is still stressed in any way. It looks like she might have had some kind of 'reset' on running.?


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## XavierDeRoos (Jan 27, 2013)

I have no idea about the increase in running, but how are you tracking how much your hedgie is running per night?


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## reedwoman814 (Mar 4, 2013)

I moved Aeris into a bin beside my bed a couple of weeks ago when our electric was out. She ran ALL NIGHT LONG, and at one point, she stopped to take a nap and I got up to make sure she was warm enough, and she jumped up and ran into her wheel, and ran like she thought she could escape. Now I wonder if maybe she thought she was running back to her cage, too....


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## Erizo (Jul 25, 2012)

> . . . but how are you tracking how much your hedgie is running per night?


I use a Sigma 1009 odometer (wired). It gives me the total time for the night, average speed, maximum speed, and distance. Time is what I am most interested in knowing. **This odometer does not accept a wheel size as small as her wheel. To get around that, I just doubled the wheel size, and then halve the data to get the correct numbers.

Sophie's odometer:
(14:39)


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