# Trying out a Raw Diet!!



## MarleyThatFlow (Nov 5, 2011)

Hey guys! Some of you may remember me from a few years ago when I first got on here with my rescue boy Magnum, and later Quillie Nelson, although I don't think I was very active on here while I had the latter. As the story of time and life goes, both of them are resting in peace now, but my love for hedgies has not been diminished these past few years. After moving across the country and not being able to house a prickly friend, I now am in a stable place where I can do that and have rehomed a lovely boy named Barnaby.

Just a bit of background on him, he's been rehomed about two times as far as I know by some lovely but very inexperienced people. The first person I don't really know anything about, as I've had no contact with them, but the second person I actually used to pet sit dear Barnaby (nee Nigel). This poor woman thought that hedgehogs were rodents and had newspaper and pine bedding with a wire wheel and one of those water bottles with the metal spout. She was feeding him Purina dry kibble with the occasional bout of frozen peas and carrots. He was in mostly good health, but rather timid and dirty. A few months later, she asked if my partner and I would like to have him since we had more time and experience, and I jumped on the chance.

Now when I got another hedgehog, I promised myself that I would try to give them the best diet I could. Magnum ended up passing away from a nasty jaw tumor, and just from personal belief I felt that the long term kibble consumption partly lent a hand in that. I've been researching A LOT about raw diets for hedgehogs, and felt really strongly about making it work and giving my hedgie the best, healthiest chance at life as possible (though I'm definitely not saying that feeding kibble makes you a bad person at all! Been there done that and it is definitely the most convenient route!)

Now most of my research was done on this very website (thank you very much ) and I was really excited to share my story and experimentation since I noticed that experimenting with raw/holistic diets is still very new. After much consideration and practical thinking, this is the "recipe" I came up with:



1 lb ground turkey (90%lean, 10%fat)
1 cup(ish) of a medley of frozen vegetables including broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, squash, and green beans
5-6 mealworms (canned)
NOTE: This is just the master portion, hence the high quantity, and I give him a suitable portion every night and freeze the rest.

Last night I cooked up the turkey and stirred the vegetables and added the mealies when I was ready to serve it to him as well as a decent portion of kibbles since I am still transitioning him over. Around 10 o clock when he seems to arise, I could hear him going for everything but the kibbles first, and by morning he had eaten everything in his bowl, not a crumb left!

My end goal is to get him off the kibble, because I really don't want to continue feeding dry food because of the experiences I've had (with hedgies AND cats). So going forward I had gotten some calcium powder to add on to it once or twice a week as directed, but the more I thought about it, the more I had reservations to the powder form. He seems like a rather picky hedgie and I know from feeding cats (who are also picky eaters) feeding them things that might mess with the smell of the food doesn't usually go over well. So my thought maybe was scrambling up an egg (shell and all) for the calcium intake and giving him just a little bit a day. I also want to add maybe a little bit of fruit once a week as a nice treat!

I know this is a long-ish post and I do apologize for that :-D but I'm just so so excited and ready to get some feedback from you guys. So let me know what you think or what you've had success with and I'll try to keep you guys updated! Thanks for all the research and everything everyone does and everyone who contributes to this website! I wouldn't know anything about hedgies without it!!!


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

Just a heads up, I don't think that egg shell plus the egg is going to solve the calcium issue with your diet. An egg is considered a balanced food on its own - the eggshell's calcium balances the phosphorus in the egg itself. If you want to use eggshell for your calcium balance in the overall food, you're going to need to add just eggshells, not the egg too. I think you'd be better off sticking with the calcium powder as it should mix in to the rest of the mix easier & it's more convenient than cracking a bunch of eggs for the shells, drying, and powdering them.

I would strongly recommend increasing the variety & amount of insects - they're primarily insectivores in the wild and 5-6 mealworms added to the mix isn't enough insects, IMO. I don't consider it enough for kibble-fed diets either (but that's a losing battle in most cases, unfortunately), but especially not for a raw diet.

If your end goal is to take the kibble out of the equation, I would also suggest doing some more research into the vitamins & minerals currently represented in your mix & see what might be lacking - you want to be sure that everything is being offered in the foods he's getting in sufficient amounts. If you're going to stick with only plain muscle meat for the meat portion, you're going to need to make sure there's sufficient vitamins & minerals in the rest of the diet, or possibly check into a multi-vitamin to include. The reason I prefer PMR/whole animal meat grinds is that they include bone & organs - liver is full of important nutrients and makes it far more likely that all necessary vitamins/minerals are present in the diet. I also think hedgehogs are more likely to be able to utilize nutrients from an animal source versus a plant source since they primarily eat insects/animals in the wild rather than a lot of plants, but that's mostly an opinion thing (since we don't really have studies on them).


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## MarleyThatFlow (Nov 5, 2011)

Lilysmommy said:


> Just a heads up, I don't think that egg shell plus the egg is going to solve the calcium issue with your diet. An egg is considered a balanced food on its own - the eggshell's calcium balances the phosphorus in the egg itself. If you want to use eggshell for your calcium balance in the overall food, you're going to need to add just eggshells, not the egg too. I think you'd be better off sticking with the calcium powder as it should mix in to the rest of the mix easier & it's more convenient than cracking a bunch of eggs for the shells, drying, and powdering them.
> 
> I would strongly recommend increasing the variety & amount of insects - they're primarily insectivores in the wild and 5-6 mealworms added to the mix isn't enough insects, IMO. I don't consider it enough for kibble-fed diets either (but that's a losing battle in most cases, unfortunately), but especially not for a raw diet.
> 
> If your end goal is to take the kibble out of the equation, I would also suggest doing some more research into the vitamins & minerals currently represented in your mix & see what might be lacking - you want to be sure that everything is being offered in the foods he's getting in sufficient amounts. If you're going to stick with only plain muscle meat for the meat portion, you're going to need to make sure there's sufficient vitamins & minerals in the rest of the diet, or possibly check into a multi-vitamin to include. The reason I prefer PMR/whole animal meat grinds is that they include bone & organs - liver is full of important nutrients and makes it far more likely that all necessary vitamins/minerals are present in the diet. I also think hedgehogs are more likely to be able to utilize nutrients from an animal source versus a plant source since they primarily eat insects/animals in the wild rather than a lot of plants, but that's mostly an opinion thing (since we don't really have studies on them).


Thank you for the input! I was wondering what you've had success with in your raw diets? Also is there a way to tell a hedgehog has a certain vitamin deficiency? Since there is not really any research on their dietary requirements, how do we know exactly what they need, and therefore know how much they aren't getting enough of? I haven't been able to find much in terms of that.


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

So rather than going for specific amounts of different nutrients or a multi-vitamin, my approach was to go with as much variety as I could. Honestly, I'm probably a bit overkill with Bindi's current diet, but I don't think I'd feel comfortable with fewer than 3 meat proteins and 4-5 insect types (and not just the three stages of mealworms, heh). Since we don't know their specific requirements, the idea is to provide a wide enough variety that everything will be offered in sufficient amounts without risking an overdose due to a large portion of the diet being one food item that may be high in a specific nutrient.

The best way to check for any potential deficiencies or overdoses is getting bloodwork done. I've been getting bloodwork done on Bindi at her 6-month check ups since we started the raw diet, so she's had it done twice now. The only abnormalities that have been marked on them have been slightly higher-than-usual protein, albumin, and calcium levels. The lab specializes in exotics & was notified about her raw diet, so with that in mind, they didn't consider any of those things a concern. Without bloodwork, you won't know until there are physical symptoms of the deficiency - and often by that point, it's pretty far along & can be difficult to treat, depending on the deficiency.

If you want to look at specific numbers, I would look at the guidelines used for cat food, since hedgehogs can do just fine on cat kibble. I believe you should be able to find the AAFCO guidelines/charts online, I remember finding them once months ago, but I didn't bookmark. Personally, I think trying to specifically calculate it out is a really fast way to drop the idea entirely. It also wouldn't be exact anyway - we can't know exactly how much of a vitamin or mineral a hedgehog could obtain from a specific food source over another (meat versus plant, for example), and there are various things that can work against each other (such as oxalates impairing calcium absorption). We also don't really have much in the way of nutrient information for most insects - you can typically find protein/fat/fiber percentages for a lot of feeder insects, but not much for vitamin/mineral content. So they're kind of a wild card, so to speak.

So yeah...rather than mess around with specific numbers, I go for variety, careful choice of foods, and bloodwork to double-check myself. Variety of insects gives a variety of sources for whatever nutrients they may hold, though we don't know specifics. Variety of meat sources also gives a variety of nutrients (which we do know more about) & the whole grinds are balanced in themselves & give me a lot of reassurance re: vitamins/minerals due to the organ inclusion.

For veggies, I did carefully choose what ones I wanted to use - I made a spreadsheet that included protein/fat/fiber (didn't pay much attention to those for veggies specifically, they just figured in for checking the final diet percentages), calcium & phosphorus, and vitamins/minerals. My first deciding factor was the calcium: phosphorus ratio, as I wanted the veggie mix to be balanced in that ratio so that I would mostly be supplementing calcium to balance out the insects. So that was a big reason the four greens made it in - they're all high in calcium. The other veggies are all higher in phosphorus, but the greens balance them out (theoretically - I know kale is high-ish in oxalates, though I don't think the other three are as much). After that I went through and found the veggies that were highest in each vitamin & mineral and marked the top three for each nutrient. Then I went through & chose the veggies that had the highest "top three" marks. Each veggie chosen was a "top three" veggie for at least three nutrients.

Other than all of that...if you're going to try & calculate anything out, I would be most careful about the calcium: phosphorus ratio. That's one thing that goes wrong a lot of the time when people are trying to do raw/homemade diets for exotic animals. And it's especially important for a baby, as they're growing and need more calcium than usual. I double checked my wildlife rehab manual & it says that adults generally need 1.5:1 & young mammals need 1.5:1 to 2:1. It also mentions that animals can excrete moderate excesses of calcium with fewer issues than excess phosphorus & it's much more likely to end up with a calcium deficiency than overdose. So err on the side of more. I started out sprinkling calcium on Bindi's insects 2 out of 3 days. When her bloodwork came up with the slightly high calcium levels, I took that as a sign that we were in the clear, especially since she's an adult, so I've backed down to 3x/week with no issues.

Okay, shutting up now. :lol: Sorry if that was a lot all at once! I can get carried away easily talking about nutrition & raw diets.

Edit: Just kidding, hah. Thought this link might be useful, it's one that I bookmarked after seeing it linked to help explain why raw feeders of dogs/cats/ferrets advocate so strongly for variety & why organs are so important - http://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/raw-diets-for-dogs-getting-enough-vitamins-and-minerals/ Some specifics to note from it - iodine only comes from seafood & egg (and a couple weird herbs), so that's one reason I have fish in Bindi's meat rotation. The other reason is for Vitamin D, to be sure she gets enough. Liver has VitD as well, but good to have more than one source. Vitamin B12 was another nutrient not found in any of my chosen veggies, but is present in a lot of meat sources, so that's covered as well. Also be careful if you check into any of the herbal sources listed - a lot of those have other effects to watch out for. I'd rather stick with regular foods than any supplements, even herbal, unless there's a specific reason to supplement them.


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## MarleyThatFlow (Nov 5, 2011)

Thank you so much for all this information it is really really helpful, especially to someone (me ) who doesn't really know nutrition that well! I mean for f*ck's sake, my hedgehog is currently eating better than I do (though I do hope to change that in the near future).



Lilysmommy said:


> So rather than going for specific amounts of different nutrients or a multi-vitamin, my approach was to go with as much variety as I could. Honestly, I'm probably a bit overkill with Bindi's current diet, but I don't think I'd feel comfortable with fewer than 3 meat proteins and 4-5 insect types (and not just the three stages of mealworms, heh). Since we don't know their specific requirements, the idea is to provide a wide enough variety that everything will be offered in sufficient amounts without risking an overdose due to a large portion of the diet being one food item that may be high in a specific nutrient.


I just wanted to double check with you on what you meant by 3 different meat proteins. Is that what you meant by the muscle, liver and bone? Is there any way to supplement that or is that basically sort of the be all, end all? I'm also definitely thinking of adding more insects, I'm just having trouble deciding what kind and if I want to do live (me and my partner are pretty squeamish lol)

So I did find a multivitamin here http://www.exoticnutrition.com/r00021.html that looks pretty promising, but I wanted to know what you guys thought of this one, and if you'd ever used it or had success with it! Otherwise if you had any other suggestions for a multivitamin I would be open to it. I did sprinkle on some of the calcium powder I bought, (I just hope it was enough though because it didn't really give any clear instructions on exactly _how much_ to use) and Barnaby gobbled it down! I was so worried it would turn his nose up at it!

ALSO: He is now refusing to eat his kibbles, so I have stopped offering them since he won't touch them. I am doing more research to provide more vitamins and I found out that collard greens have an insanely high calcium level, so I thought about maybe offering him some of those. He also doesn't always eat all his vegetables, so either I'm feeding him a bit too much, or I need to offer a bit more than I am so the meat is evenly distributed (but again I'm not sure what sort of ratios I need to have as far as meat:veggie).


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

My animals all eat better than me too. :lol: I hate feeding myself! But animal nutrition is a major special interest for me...shame it doesn't extend to humans!

Ah, sorry! Okay, so those are two different concepts/things. For the meat portion of the diet, I emulated what a balanced raw diet is for carnivores. For the overall diet, you want 80% muscle meat, 10% bone, and 10% organs - 5% of that would be liver, 5% other organs (spleen, pancreas, kidneys, testicles, brains). Separate from that, it's recommended to include at least 3 different proteins for a balanced diet - different proteins meaning chicken, beef, pork, duck, goat, etc.

The grinds that I order from Hare Today (https://hare-today.com/category/meat_proteins_or_packaging_types/ground) are the ground meat/bone/organ ones. Technically several of the ones I get like chicken, duck, etc. aren't completely balanced for carnivores - they have liver, but no other organs. Not ideal, but I'm fine with using them for the hedgehogs because they're getting the insects & veggie/fruit mix as well, rather than only depending on the meat. Still, they have the liver & bone in there, which is the most important thing, IMO. I find it easiest to order the grinds already made than try to do it myself, but you do have to order at least 10 pounds from HT. If you don't want to order that much of the grinds, you could also check into commercial raw dog & cat foods. Bonus - a lot of them, especially the dog ones, include veggies. They'd also be balanced, so it'd be way less work for you - you could offer the commercial raw + insects (with calcium powder to balance the insects). But that choice is up to you!

You totally don't have to do live insects - the only ones Bindi gets that are still live are mealworms and phoenix worms. Everything else I get, I freeze. It's way easier to store them until she eats through all of them, I don't have them dying before they can be fed to her, I don't have to worry about feeding, and I don't have to worry about them escaping & freaking out my bug-phobic roomie (who is so, so patient with me :lol! If you're looking for easy & nutritious ones, my recommendations are maggots, hornworms, dubia roaches, snails, and grasshoppers.

Maggots - Okay, sounds SO GROSS, I know! But they come in little baggies, you're not supposed to feed them or gutload them or anything to begin with, so you can just pop them directly in the freezer, then sort them out from the bedding for feeding. They're really quite nutritious & Bindi loves them. They were one of her early favorites.

Hornworms - Keep them alive for a week or so after you get them & they grow HUGE. Around 3-4". Gross, but then you can freeze them and they give you a lot of bulk for the price.

Dubia roaches - a popular, nutritious feeder. They're pathetic, as far as roaches go. Not fast, I typically order juvenile nymphs which are ~.5-1", and while you probably should gutload them with some veggies & such when you first get them, I pop them right in the freezer because I just don't have a set up currently where I could house them in something for feeding, then freeze. They also tend to be pretty well received by hedgehogs, from what I've seen.

Snails & grasshoppers - you can buy these canned too!  The canned snails especially have a lot in there & can last for quite a while. They're also easy to spread on a plate or tray & freeze, then place back in a container for easy storage.

I haven't used the product & don't know anyone who has with any actual reason (some people are erroneously told to use it by ignorant vets, pet stores, etc.), but I'm a little iffy on it. It may say on the container, but it doesn't say on the page anywhere what the amount of any of the vitamins is, or if there are any dosage instructions. Without being able to see it in person, I'd be hesitant to spend money on it. Personally, if I were going to get a multivitamin, I'd check into ones for dogs & scale the dosing down for hedgehog size. You do want to be careful with multivitamins because there are several vitamins (A, D, E, K) that are fat-soluble which means they stick around in the body longer & can be more easily overdosed than the others (which are water-soluble and excreted in urine when unnecessary). Some people figure that using them "just in case!" in addition to balanced diets is fine, but it can actually be an issue.

I'm glad he wasn't bothered by it! Bindi's never been either. I know it's hard to gauge the dosing - Reptile people typically shake insects around in a bag with calcium powder to lightly coat them in it before feeding & that works out well, I guess. Hard to do that with frozen ones though because they're wet! I can take a picture to show how much I sprinkle on Bindi's on Monday if you'd like. I believe Ashley (FinnickHog) also has a section of her calculations spreadsheet for calcium, but I can't recall if it works as originally intended or the details about it...She might see this & pop in to comment if she's able to. This is the thread - http://www.hedgehogcentral.com/forums/12-diet-nutrition/144217-raw-diet-spreadsheets-calculator.html

Yup, that's one of the reasons I have collard greens in Bindi's veggie mix!  Also she doesn't always eat all of her veggie mix either - I honestly find it really interesting. She'll go in several day to a week streaks either way. A period of time eating most/all of her veggie mix, then a period of time with not really touching it much, and then back again. It makes me wonder if she's self-regulating it herself. If he's still eating most of them most of the time, I wouldn't worry TOO much. If he wasn't touching them at all if he could help it, it'd be worth mixing them into the meat more to try & get more in him, but it doesn't sound too off to me, personally.

Oh, and as far as ratios...at least for me & Bindi's diet, I went for 40% insects, 30% meat, 20% veggies, and 10% fruit. I think their diet in the wild would likely lean more heavily towards insects, with less of meat & veggies, but I figure it makes a decent approximation without completely breaking my bank on insects & giving her more foods where we know more nutritional info (meat & veggies). So far, so good with Bindi!


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

Oh by the way....do you mind if I link this thread on the Raw & Home Cooked Diets sticky? I like to keep a list of the raw diet threads on there to make it easy for interested owners to look at what others have done & read information that's been written up already!


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## MarleyThatFlow (Nov 5, 2011)

Ohhh okay the protein thing makes more sense now haha! So as far as offering more do you just have a few different types that you mix together in your final "product" or do you feed some turkey one day and duck another, that sort of thing. 

I saw that you order your grinds online and I was just wondering what that experience is like for you. I'm not sure why but it just makes me a little nervous to order meats online, since I've really never done that before. I thought about getting some commercial raw dog/cat food, because I used to work at a cat rescue and they highly swore by that type of diet, but doing research on here showed me people are pretty divided on whether or not to use them. Are they generally higher in protein, and is that okay? (P.S. Sorry for asking so many questions, I'm trying to absorb as much as I can )

Thank you for all the information about the insects! Right now I feed him canned mealworms and he absolutely loves them, and I've tried introducing canned crickets (as they were the only other canned bug at the store, so I thought I'd give it a try) and he's not as big a fan. He'll eat some of it, but more often than not he leaves a lot of it behind. I definitely want to get more of a variety in his insect mix so I'll either check the pet store and go with live (but freeze them) or I'll check online and do the same thing. 

I'll look into the multivitamin more! I'm still not sure if I want to offer it since I am feeding a variety of fruits/vegetables. Sidenote: I tried to give Barnaby a little slice of mango and he wouldn't touch it  Hedgehogs are so interesting with their tastes. 

I took a look into the thread and I absolutely love it so I'll definitely have to give it a closer look and go more in depth. It seems like it has plenty of info and that's my absolute favorite thing! The ratios are also a really good insight and I think I'll definitely work towards offering a bit more insects with variety (as I stated earlier).

And I don't mind at all if you put this thread in the sticky! I hope I can learn from and help other people learn from this thread!


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

I feed one protein type a day & rotate them, but that's personal preference. It would be easier to mix them together into one mix, once your hedgehog is introduced to each! I'm starting to head that direction as I get tired of doing everything separately & start leaning towards convenience. I still prefer to keep insects separately though, even though it takes up more room - I think keeping them whole where possible adds enrichment & also might help clean their teeth? Hard to tell, honestly, but I'll probably keep them separate & whole anyway.

I absolutely love the companies I've ordered from, both for Bindi & for my old family dog. Hare Today is the one I use for Bindi & I love them. They package things wonderfully & everything is still hard & frozen when I get to it, even in the summer. You can also order extra ice packs if you're concerned. I've heard similar things about most of the other big sites like Reel Raw, My Pet Carnivore, and Raw Feeding Miami. The shipping may be pretty pricey for you in Oregon though, so the commercial ones might be cheaper & more convenient.

You'd have to calculate dry matter basis to check protein levels in a way that compares to kibble - the explanation for how is in here - http://www.hedgehogcentral.com/forums/12-diet-nutrition/19-soft-food-recommendations.html But yes, IMO, it's fine to have wet or raw food be a bit higher in protein as it's also higher in moisture. If you go for the raw foods aimed at dogs, they often have a bit higher fruit & veg amount, which lessens the protein & is perfect for a hedgehog. So far there was at least one person that I remember who fed mainly a commercial raw food & their hedgehog did great on it. They used Nature's Variety.

Good luck with the insects! Bindi's a weirdo & not picky at all, so I'm not much help with what insects other hedgies might do better with. :lol: The only things she balked at for a very short time were earthworms and snails. Rainbow Mealworms is my favorite company to order from - a great variety & they're really nice to work with. UPS screwed up my delivery once & all of my 200 crickets died, so RW gave me a $5 store credit to try & make up for it even though it wasn't their fault.

Bindi liked mango. She hates berries, though! She's only just now eating them all mixed in with her veggie mix. They definitely are specific with their tastes, it's kinda funny.

I'm glad you're asking questions & taking in all of the info!  It's really encouraging to have someone open to the idea in the first place, and also willing to take suggestions & increase the variety. There was a frustrating experience on here a while back with someone insisting on feeding only 3 types of insects and some fruit, with some calcium powder on the insects and thought it'd be fine. Drove me nuts! So I'm in heaven right now. :lol: Someone to babble nutrition info at who's willing to listen!


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