Meet my spiky family of Pygmy Hedgehogs

Blackpool Gazette

Annette Blagden has turned her spare room into a nursery - for her pet hedgehogs! The spiky creatures each have their own little habitat, where they sleep, run and play with their toys.   Mrs Blagden is so crazy about these cute prickly animals that she's even turned her shed into a hedgehog hospital in case any injured ones are found in the wild.  To learn more about African Pygmy Hedgehogs, or adopt one, visit https://www.happyquillsrescueandrehoming.co.uk/

Transcript

00:00 They are quirky, they are funny, they have their own personality.

00:07 You get the really huffy, grumpy ones which I fall for straight away because I want to bring them out of it.

00:17 I want to help them.

00:19 And then you get the friendly ones that run all over you.

00:22 They're like hamsters with spikes, some of them.

00:24 We currently have Rossy who is a baby, he's about 15 months.

00:31 And we have Neve who I've had about 2 and a half years, I've had her since she was little.

00:38 And I adopted those two.

00:40 And then I've got Mikey who's a permanent foster with happy quills.

00:44 Unfortunately he's too old to be adopted out.

00:48 So the earliest you see them out is probably about 7 or 8 o'clock in the evening.

00:54 And then others don't even come out until about 3 or 4.

00:58 Mine tend to wait until we've gone to bed and then come out so that I don't bother them.

01:04 They love running around in the living rooms.

01:06 We let them run in the living room, they run in the run.

01:10 And then out the castle that we've put in there.

01:13 The little houses out of Doll's houses, Huffypop's housing, they painted and built some of the other ones.

01:21 And they have their own wheels.

01:25 We've made them two levels because they do need areas to run.

01:29 We've found that one level's great when they're old, but when they're young they like to run around.

01:36 And they do some really quirky things as well, like the toys.

01:40 We had Dennis, so unfortunately we've lost him recently.

01:43 But he likes a little mint cat stick that I got him.

01:47 He'd pick it up and shake it like a dog rags a rag.

01:52 So yeah, he'd pick it up and shake it.

01:54 And Mikey likes to take his toys to bed.

01:57 He lifts them up and carries them upstairs. I find them upstairs.

02:01 They're African pygmies so they need constant heat.

02:04 And that means even if I bring them out here, I have to have them in a hot blanket or a hot microwave pad.

02:13 How common are they at the Keepers Pets in this country?

02:17 At the moment they're getting more and more common, especially in the Somerset South area.

02:23 There's quite a number of people that are...

02:26 We've got currently many, many members on the Happy Quills site now that are keen to adopt and foster them.

02:34 And some of them are sponsored. The permanent ones get sponsored.

02:38 So yeah, we've got quite a lot of members at the minute and they all want to join in.

02:43 They all want to do it.

Category

Transcript

Recommended