# How much do hedgehogs drink?



## juliabelle

Hi everyone! 

I have a new hedgehog, over a week now, and I'm concerned about his water intake. He seems healthy, eats a good amount, eats some meal worms, and his poop looks normal. I've also seen him pee a bit, but his bedding isn't currently ideal for seeing pee.
However, he barely drinks it seems. Maybe a few millilitres per day. How much should he drink? He's being treated for mites and we've gotten his appetite back up after his initial move and stress. He seems fine and active, his temperament is great, but i don't want him to dehydrate. I hope he's not secretly sick!
Any advice? Thanks!


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## nikki

Hedgies don't drink an awful lot but they do drink some. Are you using a bowl or a bottle for him? If you're using a bottle you should put a dish in too, some hedgies won't drink from bottles and even if they do they drink less than they would from a bowl because its an awkward angle for them.


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## shkwade

I think every hedgie would be different but mine seems to drink more then normal. His water dish is a 250 gram container (sorry I was too lazy to find the conversion) and it's usually half gone every morning. Oh and I couldn't get him to drink from a bottle for the life of me. I just took it away and used a dish.


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## juliabelle

I'm using a bowl. He drinks a little, and I see him pee. He doesn't seem dehydrated, I just want to make sure he's getting adequate water!


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## Erizo

I think that you should get some data to help answer your question. They drink and eat so little, if you don't get good measurements consumption is just a guess, as are comparisons.

My girl currently drinks 30ml - 35ml (~6 tsp / ~2tbl) a night. I use a graduated cylinder that I got from a laboratory supply house to measure her water in 1ml increments. Her dish is a 1" tall, 5" diameter, ceramic ramequin which holds 160ml and is refreshed daily.

Consumption has fluctuated. When she was a baby, she was taking in 60ml a night (~1/4 cup). She went through a longish period where she was averaging a pitiful poor 15ml - 20ml a night. Boy, did that worry me. But she appeared normal in every other respect, so guess it was just a phase. Worse on me than it was on her I reckon, but I had a lot of data points so my monitoring was not random worrying.

Keep in mind that he is very new to you, so all data should be considered skewed. You have no baseline and early data may be corrupted by various stresses of the new environment and such.


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## juliabelle

He's currently drinking 16-23ml per day based on my measurements. He also only weighs 333 and has lost 20g since we got him. That's in another topic that I just posted. I'm here to get data from experienced owners because I have no idea what to expect and look for. 
Also, he's new, but he's incredibly social. I hold, snuggle, and pet him no problem. He even gets comfy and sprawls out. I don't think he has any stresses from being new anymore.


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## Erizo

I went back and looked at my daily notes. When my girl took the steep drop in water consumption (peaking at 60ml a night as a baby), she was averaging on the low side of 20ml - 25ml, and dipping as low as 12ml a night fairly often. That went on for quite a while; weeks. Food consumption was good. Wheel time was high. Behavior was good. I just kept a close eye on things. Nothing else to do. No other red flags.

She finally picked up consumption (for no apparent reason) and is now steady at 30ml - 35ml; some nights a touch more.

I'm linking to a PDF of her weigh-ins. She is weighed every Monday afternoon. Her data should not be considered 'typical' however. She is one of those hedgies that doesn't maintain weight well, and we have made several diet changes, including a couple of very significant changes; variously increasing fat percentage and also protein percentage well above what is typically recommended.

She is on high quality foods, but she will only eat X amount - and no more. So we've had to push up the amount of nutrients in what she will eat. At 50 weeks, she weighs less than she did at 11 weeks. She peaked at 330 grams, dropped significantly. Peaked again at 336 grams, and dropped significantly again. No apparent reasons. Natural metabolism shifts as far as we can tell.

We're in the beginning of another change in diet now and hoping to see some modest gain in the next week or two. She's a runner; that's always been part of her issue. She's a big-time sleeper also, probably close to 20 hours, so figure her metabolism is trickier than with some. She is sleeping or running.

'Proper' weight can vary widely, depending on wheeling, other activity, metabolism, amount of food eaten, quality of food eaten . . . . She has that nice teardrop shape when she is heavier, but I think that she may just always be 'sleek'. That's fine, but the difference between sleek and thin can be narrow, so am trying to make sure there is a cushion.

She's a 'preference eater' which has helped. She has accepted most food offerings (a big plus), and only eats in order of preference. When she is full, she just stops eating. So we 'ration' the favorites and free feed the least favorite (which would otherwise be her favorite if she didn't have the others - it's enough to drive you bonkers).

One big plus for her is that she gets 20 live mealies a day! 13 in the late afternoon and 7 at night. It seems you can't hardly give her too much fat, or too much anything. The problem is getting enough in her. Ha! We were giving her five live crickets a day for 5 days, every two or three weeks. She LOVES crickets even more than mealies. We've stopped the cricket treats pending her picking up some more weight. That's not a lot to eat, but she eats so little we are trying for high-fat and high-protein in anything she eats.

She is further confounding us by dropping her wheel time average for the last several weeks by over one hour a night, from an average of solidly over three hours a night, to barely two hours, with numerous nights below that - yet with no noticeable benefit to gaining weight from less activity. Grrr. She has two 2 grid x 4 grid C&C cages with a bridge connecting them, so with ~22 sq. ft. she is hardly confined or constrained.

http://serenebreezes.com/weigh-ins.pdf

I wouldn't worry too much about a 20 gram drop in an animal that is still pretty new to you. There are many reasons that could occur, and I would just monitor for now and gather data points.


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## kc_

*I need a hedgie*

In my school our teacher is making us do a project and write about an animal we like i mean like he made us some questions we had to answer and when I search it up on google it wont work I need help with these questions please answer as fast as you can 1.how much water does a hedgehog need each day? 2. how do you feed a hedgehog/ give it water? 3. How much exercise does the hedgehog need? 4. when will it exercise that's all Thank you.


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