[azyrios]

Besides the bad alliteration in the title, this event occured between thursday and sunday.

Vex's poop of late smells especially bad. Often times i find myself sitting at my desk and the horrid smell comes wafting up and my first suspicion is "did i fart and not know?". Directly after i realize i am not crazy and did not pass gas, i look over to see vex sitting on his wheel with a huge poop sitting right in front of his wheel. (not in the litter box but next to it).

Anyways, his stool looked normalish. Nice and brown, firm but there is one thing i notice. It appears as tho it is somewhat grainy, kind of like wet cat food with ground up kibble in it type of grainy.

Now bear in mind that vex himself does not stink, and there is no poop getting stuck to his bum, it is just when he does poop the stool itself smells really really bad, almost like rotten wet cat food only worse.

Now this has stopped since yesterday, but all weekend (thursday-friday) he has been especially stinky (i almost had to leave my room). He stopped having smelly BMs since and they do not look at all grainy anymore.

I am feeding him Wellness, Natural Balance, chicken soup and meal worms, and he has not displayed any symptoms of being allergic to any of them as he has been on them for more than 2 weeks prior to this event.

My question is, what could have caused such stinky stool?
Does anyone else have a hedgehog that produces such a noxious odor?
Is it common for a hedgehog to have a grainy substance in it's stool? (i think it was digested chitin)
Should stinky stool set off any warnings as to my hedgehogs health like green stool does?
I know salmon can cause stinky stool, but i do not believe there is any salmon in his food. Are there other common ingredients that cause stinky stool?
Why did it suddenly clear up?

 

[Zalea]

You probably already thought of this since you were so thorough with your post before, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Did you give him any different treats recently? I gave Quentin some canned cat food one day, and it came out the other end with the worst smell in the world, like rotten canned cat food. It was a terrible and unforgettable stench, and I'm never giving him that type of cat food again. I couldn't believe something so little could be so stinky with such a small amount of a treat.
If you haven't been doing so, I'm not sure what it could be--but I'm sure you're glad that it cleared up if it was anything like I experienced. :lol:

 

[azyrios]

lol it was back again last night. It seems to happen when he poops and pees at the same time on his wheel.

I thought it might be from the hills A/D, but he didn't have that reaction the first night. It smells like the wellness i am feeding him only stinky and potent. The smell clears up quickly, and he sure suits my family, but wow is ti stinky. His poops are a very light brown, no mucus or green, and he usually runs through it making it hard to tell the original consistency of it (unsmooshed parts look a little harder than toothpaste, while the smooshed stuff is smeared everywhere.)

Just in case i am getting a stool sample taken when i take him in for a skin scraping.
Can anyone explain exactly how they do a skin scraping on a hedgehog. For my dog they rubbed her with a scalpel, but i doubt you could dot that to a hedgehog considering the popping and moving.

 

[hedgieMate]

I may be way off, but here are a couple of thoughts on the issue:

• (1) I recall reading something about Wellness causing minor digestive problems in a few hedgehogs. I don't think anyone said specifically about Wellness causing extra smelly poop, but I believe they said their hedgies had loose stool or even diarrhea when they started mixing in Wellness. Our hedgie had Wellness for a while and I didn't see any change in his stool, but I thought it was interesting a few hedgehogs had some trouble as soon as Wellness got in the mix. Maybe some ingredients used in Wellness require certain enzymes and a few hedgehogs experience minor irritations due to their lack of such enzymes? I don't know... :?:
  
  (2) I've heard many times before that the smell of poop gets much much worse when mixed with pee, especially when your hedgies are young. I think it has something to do with hormones in their pee.

I know this doesn't help much, but I thought I'd mention what I heard in the past to help shed some light on the problem.

 

[Mallasfamily]

Another thing to think about is if his water intake has dropped of those days. I know for children (entirely different I know) if they don't drink enough then they have those exact problems. So maybe check that out, see if there is a reason he can't get enough water and maybe syringe him some and see if it helps any.