Litter's first week

Have been busy monitoring the health of the hoglets for the past few days. Sometimes having too many in a litter doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing.

I was somewhat worried that the mother hedgehog couldn't proper care for all five hoglets equally, and a couple of days ago I was even more concerned to see three of the hoglets sleeping at the edge of the hidebox and were visibly very much smaller than the other two. Having too many siblings, there could be possibilities that some may not receive enough milk from the mother hedgehog and couldn't survive the first few weeks after birth.

However, I'm glad to say that all five are looking pretty active and grew longer quills during today's inspection, at least the growth shows that all are in proper health condition.

One of the hoglets looks like an albino, although it's still early to confirm. But it has reddish skin and all white quills, which will be something that needs further analysis as it grows older. Both parents are not albinos to start with, so if the hoglet really turns out to be an albino it will further concrete the idea that albino genes are recessive in hedgehogs. So far I've only seen albino offsprings if either or both parents are albino, but this is the first time to see an albino coming from non-albino parents.

The other four siblings are clear Salt & Peppers, and with only a little variation in size, all hoglets are doing great at the moment.

Next post, photo update!

5 little hoglets

As mentioned in my previous post, I am all prepared for Quills giving birth to a litter of hoglets within this week.

And as expected, the hoglets were born yesterday around morning to noon. Safely, for both the hoglets and the mother.

More good news, Quills gave birth to 5 little 'rambutans', which is quite a huge number in one litter, and from what I saw last night, they were all active enough and making plenty of squeky sounds, so I'm more than happy to see none being born with defects or died during birth.

Although Quills had been putting up a lot of weight in recent weeks, I certainly did not expect 5 hoglets, and for her to take care of the little ones for the next few weeks may be quite tiring. So I guess I will need to monitor Quills' health and condition tightly so that she won't be having any major incidents.

I am quite excited to see how the hoglets grow, and if I'm lucky hopefully this batch of hoglets I will get to see a different colour emerging.

Will keep this blog updated with photos for the next few weeks. : )

Expecting

It's been a short while since I last updated, but I have a good excuse though. : )

Quills have been piling up her weight in recent weeks, and stacked up her hidebox nicely with woodshavings for the last couple of weeks, so if everything goes according to schedule, she should be giving birth to a litter of hoglets before the end of this week.

And it's been tedious and constant monitoring of her behaviour and intake of food, which explains my temporary dormant blog here.

Let's hope everything's fine and if Quills successfully gives birth between this or next week, expect to have some photo posts in this blog.