Hedgie wont eat kibble

[alstewar]

I have had my hedgie for 3 months, and she just turned 5 months on Tuesday. She has suddenly decided she doesn't want to eat her kibble if it is dry. I have even tried mixing some chicken baby food into it, as she loves that to get her to eat it, she only ate a few kibbles and that all. she seems to be peeing fine and using her wheel but her poop is a little green. The bag kibble I have been giving her is the same since she came home.

I have took Nutmeg to the vet and they have found no real reason for her not to eat the hard kibble, her poop was even normal when she spent the night there.

She will eat the kibble if I soak it in water and I have checked the expiry dates, which are all fine.

Has anyone ever encountered this? Any ideas?

 

[Lillybabe]

I don't really know much about hedgehogs but could the food be dried out? I know even when it was "okay" my first chinchilla would snub older food. Some people even question the expiration dates on pet food as many of them say the food is good for over a year. My little chinchilla wouldn't eat the food if it was beyond 6 months old. Perhaps she's just picky and would eat a fresh bag?

 

[smhufflepuff]

Yeah... it could be that you have a potato chip phenomenon going on... the bag says it's good until February of next year, but since you opened the bag last month, those chips are well on their way to stale. Or they're fine, but she doesn't like them anymore. I had one hedgie who was eating a certain kibble and, one day, she just decided she didn't like it and wasn't going to eat any more of it. Wasn't stale, she didn't want a new bag, just really decided it was no longer for her. Perhaps your baby's tastes have changed??

I'd get a second bag of the same variety and another bag of something else... always good to have them on a mix of food. That way, if they reject one, you always have the other one to fall back on until you get another food to bring the mix back up to two.

Those types of things would be the simplest potential problems and solutions. From here, it gets more complex:

You said the vet didn't see anything problematic... am assuming they checked tooth and tummy/intestine issues.

Perhaps there's something going on during her normal eating time that upsets her - like it's too light or noisy or different scent is in the air or there's a draft. It could be that she's at the wrong temperature, or it's still in an okay range, but fluctuates too much within that range. So check her environment, and unless it's already in the mid to upper 70's F, bump the temp up a degree and make sure everything else is good.

I am glad to hear that she's eating her kibbles along with soft food and that it isn't the case that she's rejecting all food.

Hmm... mentally, I keep coming back to the fact that she'll eat it soft, but not hard... I do wonder about her teeth... I don't know if she'll let you look at her mouth when it's open, but if you have the chance, take a look in there. And double-check with the vet that they checked those teeth out. Did she actually eat kibbles at the vet? Or was that nice poop she made for them a product of the softened kibble and/or baby food?

 

[alstewar]

The part that has baffled me all along is that she is on a mix. Her mix has Chicken Soup Light, Innova, Wellness (both the light versions) and a little Before Grain Chicken. I have mixed these in a plastic container and been giving it to her from there. So yesterday I went and got a sample bag of Performatin Weight Control, which I know has a little more filler but her other foods are quite rich. When I got home I took her out and put her under her favorite blanking, yes she is spoiled, and gave her 5 kibbles of each type directly from the bag, she ate half of them while we sat there.
I also last night gave her crickets, little ones, as mealworms just cause her to become compacted.
And this morning, success, her wheel is filthy with nice healthy poops and she ate between 8 and 10g of food, her norm. And half or more was plain dry food.
I think the food in the container has become either stale or made all the food taste the same and she was bored.

 

[smhufflepuff]

Yippee for messy wheel!

Perhaps it was just something simple like the container wasn't properly sealed and it went stale.