[rissyk]

well xena has been getting a cold belly, evertime i check on her, her belly is cold and she is on top of her bed or under her fleece liner on the plastic. sometimes she is in her blanket, and when she is her belly is regular and not cold. we always keep the temp at 75 degrees and my sisters hedgies are always warm but xena has been getting cold. A couple weeks ago she stopped eating her hard food so I think she is missing some teeth, I wanted to see if she actally liked it still so I fed her a peice and she took it but she took a while to eat it, and alot of it fell out of her mouth. Right away I got her on soft food (chicken soup for the cat lovers soul adult) and I crushed her food, and mixed it together. xena seemed to like that. at first she was eating a different kind of soft food because the petstore didint have the one I wanted but now I have chicken soup soft food, im mixing them together so she can get used to the change.
when my mom and gram got her as a surprise for me from the petstore they said they told them she was 8 months old. But now I think the petstore people were lying and she is alot older then that. Is there anyway I can tell how old she is? and what should I do about her being cold is that from being old? Also how can I get her to actually go in her blanket so she doesint get cold :?: I have had her for about 8 months.

 

[freda]

When hedgies get older they have much less tolerance to the cold. Is there any way you can warm up her cage more? If you have a heat emitter you could turn up the temperatures, or maybe get her a snuggle-safe disc?

I can't speak to anything else you said so I'll leave that to the experts

 

[Nancy]

Her having difficulty eating can be from being too cool as well. Everything slows down when they are cool. Is she getting sufficient light as well she will need more heat. Is there a draft from somewhere?

Older ones do often require more heat but young ones can be temperature and light sensitive as well. My Peaches had her first hibernation attempt at 6 months old. Miki who is one of my babies has been cool off and on for the past month and she is only 10 months old. I think her issue might be lighting because the times she has been cool, I've had a baby in the center of the room and it kind of blocked some of the light into Miki's cage.

 

[rissyk]

thanks for the replies, my mom is ordering a snuggle safe disk tonight and Im going to make sure more light gets into her cage. There is a small draft from our window,which is behind xenas cage so my mom is going to put plastic over the window tonight.