New hedgehog owner with a few questions :)

Hi, my wife and I are new hedgehog owners, we read up quite a bit on them, and just bought our first lil guy on sunday. I just have a few questions.

1) We are handling him every day cuz we want him to get used to us, but so far almost every day he has pooped on us when we have him. Is this a common thing? Is it just cuz we are new to him or he is still getting used to things?.. Or do some just tend to do that.

2) Also we have noticed he is losing some quills, they are about 1/2 an inch long or so. I remember reading up on quilling but i just forget when it is and the people at the pet store believed this guy to be about 2 - 3 months old. Anyway I'm going to be looking that up after I post this anyway..

3) And one last thing. This is kind of random, and if it is totally dumb or would be harmful to the hedghog, I dont want anyone to think I want to do something that would be bad for him. I was wondering: If I slowly changed his lighting schedule by like an hour each day, so that eventually I would turn his lights on during the night, do you think he would be active during the day? We live in a basement apartment so there is not a lot of light that gets in the room during the day.. but still some, if that would make a difference too. Again, I don't want to do that if it would be bad for him, it was just something I was wondering cuz I like to see him running around, he's funny lol.

4) One last thing lol.. Do they ever get to the point where they enjoy to stay awake for a bit during the day to explore or just to be handled? I'm just asking cuz this little guy is always grumpy when we first wake him up, once he's awake though he doesnt mind being held, all he does though is try to find another place to go back to sleep. Usually he climbs up my arm and tucks his face into my armpit and goes back to sleep lol.

If anyone is wondering about cage set up, I have a 4 foot by 2 foot enclosure that I built for my bearded dragon that I used to have. So he has lots of space, for heat I am using a ceramic heat emitter, I will be getting a thermostat very soon to keep the temperatures fully under control, but for now I am monitering the temps closely and they are staying right around 75 in the cooler side and 79-82 in the warm side. I have a big solid running wheel. For substrate I have softwood shavings, they are not dusty, a couple of inches deep everywhere. And I built him a lil house out of lego. :lol: He also has a pringles containter that we covered in duct tape that he likes to push around and play with. Food and water bowls too of course.

Overall I think he's awesome.. if only my wife and I could agree on a name.. haha

Oh here are a couple of pics, I know his feet are dirty, we just gave him a bath today and the pics were taken last night. Thanks for any help you can be![attachment=0:eyfi00zj]SDC10781-resize.jpg[/attachment:eyfi00zj][attachment=1:eyfi00zj]SDC10779-resize.jpg[/attachment:eyfi00zj][attachment=2:eyfi00zj]SDC10787-resize.jpg[/attachment:eyfi00zj]