Sounds like you have *really* done your homework! If you were my kid, I definately be on board (but then- I love hedgies!)

I personally use a very large rabbit cage for my little guy. The plastic side is high enough so no climbing and I get the ventilation. It's got enough room for a large wheel and a large igloo with space to run. I know the C&C cages are nice because you can really get creative with shapes and sizes.

The litter box- I have a tray under his wheel that I just put paper towels in. I change out the paper daily and it works fine, and no stinkies. I was using unscented, non-clumping litter- but my hog is a pig and flings it EVERYWHERE. Oh and he sleeps in it. Yuck! No guarantee your hedgie will be totally litter trained- some get it, some don't.

I use fleece liners and they work great. I think most people use them. Any shavings get all over the place, so it might be a consideration, especially since your parents might ned convincing. Shavings will get on the floor when you take out your hedgehog. Fllece is great, because there's not a lot of mess. I take mine outside, give it a good shake and toss it in the washer. That way, no poopies in the washer (another red flag for worried moms & dads, it seems)

It sounds like you will be an awesome Hedgie Mom!

 

Wow, you are doing a wonderful job preparing! Sounds like your hedgie will have a great home!
I'm going to go in order and try to answer some questions. I've had my baby for two months, and my rescue girl for a few weeks. Before that I was like you, I spent about a year getting ready! Once I got my baby there was also some trial and error adjusting to his personality and preferences.
Cage: Large rabbit homes work fine, so can C&C cages! C&C cages allow you to chance things around and get creative, which can be fun! If you are worried about it being too open you can make the coroplast walls higher.
Bedding: Fleece is best. Carefresh is recommended for expecting mothers, but other than that fleece liners are great. They take away the risk of mites, are easy to spot clean daily, you can monitor hedgie bodily functions, and in the long run they save you money!
Wheel: either wheel you are considering is fine! I LOVE my flying saucer wheels, the saucer part pulls off the base and I just take them out and let them soak, then rinse. I've had no complaints.
Litter: I would suggest using Yesterdays News, or paper towel. My female seems to like digging a little big when she goes to the bathroom, and my male exclusively uses his wheel as a toilet. I started out placing their poops in their litter, and Penny took right too it. Milton's messes land on his paper towel, but only because I line underneath his wheel with it. Smell management is really just a matter of cleaning everyday. I also keep an "odor sponge" in their area.
Heating: CHE, thermostat, and thermometer is best. Get heating figured out before you bring baby home, it can take some fiddling with!
Light: A desk lamp next to the cage works fine! Just plug it into a timer, this one works great for me!: http://www.petco.com/product/111981/Zoo ... SiteSearch

Good luck!!

 

Wow! I would really love to be the breeder that sells a hedgehog to you! Well done on your research I love getting applications when people are so in detail with their answers and you can really tell they have done hours upon hours of research. So first off great job amylynnbales!

We LOVE our C&C cages and we especially love the size of the 2x3's. It's just over 6 square feet of floor space and plenty of room for them to run and have lots of toys. We live in BC, Canada, so a bit more north than you and we don't have any heating problems with any of our cages, mind you they have their own room where we heat the room as a whole. For your case, I would recommend a CHE, they work wonders over their sleeping area. If your hedgehog gets too hot, they can simply move away from the heat.

If you are having trouble with heat and light, what we have done is get one of those Exo-terra reptile basking bulbs, they can put up a comfortable amount of heat as well as light. I do not suggest the light alone as a heater, but it could be added along with the CHE. Always have a thermometer measuring the eternal temperature of the cage at all times for easy viewing and so you know your hedgie is comfortable.

For a wheel, nothing is better than a bucket wheel, whether you make it yourself, have someone make one for you or buy one from Carolina Storm. Easiest to clean, perfectly designed to accommodate a hedgehog, quiet, and hedgehogs absolutely love them!

For bedding, FLEECE ALL THE WAY for a few great reasons: reusable, washable, dust-free, clean, saves lots of money, comfortable for your hedgehog, soft on their feet, you can if they have any quill loss, see if they are going to the bathroom regularly, ect (lots of more reasons out there)

For the litter pan, we have given up with our hedgehogs trying to be litter trained LOL! They just dig through it and just mostly go to the bathroom on their wheels. We just ended up turning all their litter pans into dig boxes! We filled them with good sized pebbles and rocks and we add crickets and mealworms and hide them in there and they go nuts! They absolutely love it! Every cage cleaning day, we remove the rocks and put them into a collander to wash them through and on the plus side there is never a mess on the liners from litter or anything because the rocks are heaving enough to stay in the litter pan PROBLEM SOLVED and an excellent new toy for them!

If you sweep up the poop daily and wash the wheel when it's dirty and then change and clean the liners every 3rd or 4th day (depending on how dirty it gets), you should never have any problems with odor and by the sounds of the way you are handling everything already, I'm sure it will never be a problem in your care

Everything you had mentioned in your post seems great! I do have some suggestions for more enrichment and toys though that you could add:
- Toilet paper tubes
- PVC tunnels and tubes
- The dig box with rocks
- Big flat rocks (we live beside a river and we just take some nice sized rocks off the beach. We washed and sanitized them when we brought them home and added it to their cages in the corners to prevent liner diving, it's worked! The hedgehogs love to climb on top of them and also like to pee on them, funny that!)
- Bells on string
- Cat balls with bells
- Toy trucks
- Maracas (the plastic toy ones that you see at the dollar store in the kids toy section, they make so much noise and the hedgies like to push them around)
- Scunched up balls of white printer paper

I think there is more, but I can't think of them all at the moment.

Good luck with everything and we hope to hear on updates

 

Agreed with the above comments, just wanted to add a few things!

With a C&C cage, they are more open, but as jholstein said, you can make the coroplast higher to help keep heat in, and you can insulate other ways too - fleece blankets secured around the sides, a blanket or quilt underneath to hold in heat from the bottom, keeping the cage off the floor if possible, since that's usually colder, and placing the cage on an inside wall (rest of the house on the other side, rather than the outside).

The biggest part of avoiding a smelly cage is regular cleaning - you can usually spot-clean the fleece every day by pulling off the dried poops, and you'll want to clean the wheel every day as well. If you do that in the morning, that will avoid having everything sit around all day and continue being smelly. Changing the fleece liners out 2-3 times a week can help with smell too, along with washing them right away or putting them in an airtight container until washing day. Babies DO tend to have smellier poop and pee, just to prepare you. You can also help with the smell by putting an open box of baking soda next to the cage to help absorb smells and just give the box a shake every few days to keep it fresh.

Also keep in mind that not all hedgehogs will litter train - some will and some won't, so you'll just have to wait and see if your baby does or not. You can definitely give it a shot, just be prepared! And almost all hedgehogs go on their wheel even if they're litter trained, which I'm sure you've already read with as prepared as you sound!

I agree, it sounds like you'll be a great hedgehog owner, glad you're doing so much research first!

 

I have a C&C cage for Sonic. his cage is 2x4 so he has 10.58 sq feet of space to run around. you can also put a blanket over the top of the cage to keep the heat in. I do not have a heat light or blanket on his cage cause I live in florida. we keep our apt at 75 degrees.