Due Date???

Okay so my champagne coloured hedgie "Loofah" was hopefully impregnated by her boyfriend and will have her first litter on approx. June 3rd or if she took after pairing her with her man the second try, then should be approx. June 16, 2011. It's recommended that you put the male and female hedgies in together in the males cage for a week, but for first time females some breeders recommend placing them together another week after a week of repose and separation in-between. Therefore I have the two dates down, I'm hoping it's the 1st date as I'm excited to see how she does as a first time momma and what colours she will produce. The male is a salt & pepper pinto. Pintos are so cool as they have varrying degrees of white patches on their bodies completely lacking any pigment. Some have small dime size patches and some are completely covered with only a few coloured quills and those would be reverse pintos or tobiano pintos. The champagne looks like a light taupe colour or sandy colour if you will with dark ruby eyes and pink nose with a liver rim. Sometimes this colour is confused with apricot but apricot hedgies have more of an orange tinge to their quills instead of the taupe in the champagnes. For a great discription of hedgehog colours visit http://hedgehogcentral.com/colorguide.shtml
Here are some pics of baby hedgehogs, they are born blind, barely walk or move for that matter and quill-less. They get soft sparce quills within the first hour after being born. They are weaned by about 5-6 weeks depending on litter size and how tolerant the mother is, some larger litters may take upto 8 weeks to wean. 7 weeks is a good rule of thumb and safe age to send them to their new homes if they are healthy. Check the pic. below.

So fingers crossed that Loofah is infact pregnan and has her babies around the two dates listed above. The hoglets sell between $150-$170 which is very cheap compared to the US which I've noticed many, many breeders around the country sell them for $200-$350 yikes! They are very easy to keep but the hardest thing to provide for them is constant heat between 72-85 degrees farenheite. If kept in a basement or garage, these creatures would not survive unless block heaters or heat lamps were kept at a constant temperature to keep them from going into hibernation which is deadly to domesticated hedgehogs and most often irreversible. I will keep posting on Loofah's progress along with pictures.

this is her now...taken two days ago May 25, 2011. It's so frustrating that I cant visually tell if she's pregnant, will have to wait and listen to baby hoglet wines or movement inside her igloo.

(Loofah, first time pregnant champagne coloured hedgie)