Sophie Hannan, Canada, May 26, 2006
My name is Sophie Hannan, President and founder of The Canadian Hedgehog Association. Your page was forwarded to my attention and I would like to let you know about at least one small mistake.
First, there is no such thing as a dwarf African hedgehog. They are simply
called African Hedgehog or White bellied.
Under one of the pictures, you suggest to use leather gloves to handle a
hedgehog at first. By using gloves, the animal doesn't get to recognize your odor and it will take longer to socialize. It is much better to take the hedgehog with its cover if you don't like the feeling of the quills. Thank you very much.

Victoria Barker, November 28, 2006
Hi! I own three pygmy hedgehogs at the moment, and like your site very much. However, there are several misconceptions on your hedgehog page, and I was wondering if you could please change them, or add in alternate information. :)
Male hedgehogs aren't any more aggressive than females unless they're placed with other males (which shouldn't be done anyway).
Food should be left out all night, and not limited. Unless it's a fresh diet
that will spoil -- which isn't the case with most cat foods -- hedgehogs
should have access to food at all time. If given lots of roaming time
outside their cage, or a suitable wheel, hedgehogs will remain at a
perfectly healthy weight. Removing their food at night would be like denying humans food during the daytime. It's when they're most active, and when they should have access to food.
Water bottles have many downfalls, although water quality should be taken into consideration. Water will stay clean if you replace it every day.
Hedgehogs can chip their teeth on water bottles, their necks aren't made
like rodents (so they shouldn't have to bend up to reach the nozzle), their
long tongues can get stuck between the metal ball and the lip of the nozzle, and it's more difficult to get water out of. When offered a dish, many hedgehogs will drink much more than when they had a bottle. The only downfall to dishes is that if you keep your hedgehog on bedding, the bedding may be kicked into it. If you get a heavy water dish, they shouldn't be able to knock them over, so that shouldn't be a concern.
Other bedding you can keep your hedgehog on is Carefresh and liners. Liners in particular are recommended, as they're cheap, reuseable, and create no dust (which can often irritate a hedgehog's sensitive nose). Sneezing is often cured by switching to liners.
I would never recommend hedgehog food to any owner. I just got a rescue who'd been starving to death on hedgehog food because she didn't recognize it as a food source. Most commercial hedgehog foods are not only a choking hazard, but hedgehogs have died of malnutrition because of it. They're simply inadequate as a food source. Cat food used to be inadequate as well, but now there are lite formulas that are a great base of most hedgehog diets.
Most high-quality cat foods come in a high-protein, low-fat version for
overweight cats, which is what you should feed. Look for fat under 10%, and protein over 20%.
As for exercise, hedgehogs should be provided with a solid-surface running wheel at least 11" in diameter. There are many brands available, and if you can't find any, there are even do-it-yourself sites on how to make your own wheels.
With their habit of annointing, giving them newspaper as a toy isn't ideal,
as it could potentially harm them. Some other recommended toys are toilet paper tubes (cut up one side so they can't get stuck), jingly cat ball toys, and sections of PVC pipe.
Keeping hedgehogs supervised outside is a good idea, but letting them eat things off the ground is not. Insects they ingest may have come into contact with pesticides or disease, which can transmit to your hedgehog.
Raisins present a choking hazard as a treat, and grapes have been attributed to sickness in hedgehogs. It's unconfirmed as to whether grapes are bad, but after several reports of a hedgehog getting violently ill after eating one, it's a very risky idea.
Ladders are very unsafe for hedgehogs. Their legs can be caught very easily. They have naturally bad eyesight, so it would be easy for them to miss a step and fall. Multi-level ferret cages are an especially unwise idea; I've seen hedgehogs fall from the ramps provided with such cages. Instead, hedgehogs should be kept on a single-level, rampless cage. If you're set on ramps, however, you could modify it and build walls on either side of the ramp so that the hedgehog can't fall off. Thank you!