Trina's Family

From Tony Thain:

Those who follow The Diary avidly will remember that a few weeks ago I reported that one of our rescued hedgehogs, Trina, had produced five offspring - see earlier blog here. We had to be very careful not to disturb mum and babies, until Trina allowed us to help her. Unfortunately, Tonia's hand was forced when she found that one of the babies had died, which meant that she had to check the others. It was even more sad that she found that there had been another death, reducing the family to three plus mum. This sort of tragic happening is not unusual in large litters in the wild as the average hedgehog family usually amounts to two surviving hoglets. Trina has done exceptionally well, especially as she is a first time mum and was probably just as surprised as we were.

In my last report, I promised The Diary that as soon as I could safely take photos of the family, I would.  The first one is of a hoglet that I descibed as a "furry catapillar with a mohican", and was taken when Tonia was forced to check all the babies after the two losses. After that Trina was left in peace to look after the remaining three. Tonia suspected that Trina was having trouble producing milk, so her food was laced with extra vitamins, minerals and a touch of glucose was added to her water; obviously this sort of thing doesn't happen in the wild, which is probably why hedgehog mums end up with two or less hoglets growing into adults.

This seemed to do the trick as the hoglets soon started to put on weight and, as can be seen from the remaining photos, they are now about a third of the size of Trina, looking like small hedgehogs rather than furry caterpillars, and starting to act like teenagers.

When Tonia cleans out their enclosure and house she is usually helped by three inquisitve youngsters, sitting on her feet or trying to climb up her trouser leg.

Trina seems to be very proud of her family, as can be seen in the outside photo shoot. There is always one that is more inquisitive than the others and in the end I had one little chap just about climbing all over the camera. Trying to get four very independent animals to do what you want and to stay still long enough for a photo was quite a challenge.

Talking of challenges; our next one is introducing the family to "outside"!