I sent a baby Hedgie home 2 months ago, today it died...

[TattooMommy]

Hello everyone, I was hoping to get some advice..

After doing some pretty extensive research,
I recently got into Hedgehog breeding, I got a nice little group of adults picked out, all healthy, good temperaments & all pedigreed.

Well, my first litter was ready to go mid-March. This morning I got a txt from a lady who took 2 females. She informed me that her smallest female had died. she was the runt of the litter and I was told she didn't grow much after she went to her new home. I am very saddened to hear this & I did offer a new baby when my next litter becomes available, but is their any "Hedgie diseases" that cause a baby to stay small?

She said that she was getting enough food, not being bullied out of it by the sister Hedgie- and that she was warm enough..
apparently she had also been lethargic for the past couple days.

Anyone have any input? Hearing this just makes me panic! My first litter, and 1 has died after being placed in a new home
I have carefully chosen each adult for my Breeding herd & it would break my heart to find out it had something to do with genetics!

 

[starleomach]

I don't breed Hedgies but with chinchillas I give 2 weeks for replacement. As hard as it is it seems anything past the longest illness gestation is not the breeders fauly. it is likely something the owner did. So unless they prove it was a congenital defect once it is past the 1-2 week mark it is no longer replaced

I had to do this because you will have people come to you weeks or even months later saying you sold them a sick animal when the illness gestation has long passed. I had someone after 2 months of having their chinchilla it contracted giardia and prolapsed. They tried to insist it came sick. It was health for a month and a half and get diahreah at the end of 2 months and was dead after a week when they didn't treat it.

You need to protect yourself as a breeder sometimes. I have also had necropsies done to find out when they went home they ate plastic or carefresh or even one died because they read online chinchillas didn't need water. Sometimes an animal doesn't adjust well to a new home, but more often than not it is sadly something the new owner did, like stop to a pet store on the way home and leave the animal in the car in innapropriate weather...I have had that happen too, yes they only had the chinchilla an hour but no I will not replace for owner stupidity after going through temperature and heat requirement.

You will need to go through anything and everything they did caring for the Hedgie to make sure the other one is being properly cared for and to be sure it was nothing they did. Then replacement is to your descretion.

Again I know I deal with chinchillas not Hedgies but some things are the same all the way around. could it have gotten cold and gone into hybernation? sometimes one area of a house is warm another cold or drafty and if it was a runt more susecptable

 

[Kalandra]

Sadly, without a necropsy, it is impossible for us to really know what happened. Lethargy could have been that she had gotten a chill or she could have been very sick.

 

[smhufflepuff]

I'm sorry. It must be so hard to hear that a wee baby from your first litter to your first customer has passed.

I wish we could give you an answer to "why?" Kalandra's right about the necropsy though... without it, all we're left with are a series of guesses.

There are definitely things we (and you too) could have recommended to your customer as she noticed problems (like failure to grow) along the way - like separating the sisters so she could be certain she was accurately monitoring the smaller one's food and water intake, potty output, and so on. I'm sure you know that though...

All I can think to do is to make new steps for the future -- care sheets with "if you see X, then do Y" that go home with baby. Of course, your next customer will probably see x instead of X... And there's that saying about making something foolproof only for the world to breed "better" fools...

I'm so sorry

 

[TattooMommy]

Thank you all!

~Unfortunately I had no idea the little Hedgie was doing bad at all I wish I would have known so maybe I could have given advice!

I have been trying to find any kind of illness/disease that would make them not grow..but I have not found anything so far..

 

[Nancy]

Sometimes they can fail to thrive and despite the best care in the world, they basically stop growing and die.

It may have been that she wasn't warm enough. I hate to ask this, but are they certain she was dead and not just hibernating? I had someone contact me one time. They had bought from another breeder and said baby was fine at first but then was wobbly for a couple of days and they found her curled up in a ball dead. By their description, I'm certain that baby was in hibernation.

You should have been contacted the first day something was wrong. I told all my new parents I wanted to hear immediately if something didn't seem right. If baby died and I hadn't heard anything, then I expected a necropsy for replacement. Usually I was in daily contact with the new owners anyways for the first few weeks. I was lucky and never had an issue.

It's hard when one of our babies die. We always wonder if the owner did something, or dropped baby. I'm sorry this happened.