Hedgehogs: litter training, wheel mess and reading what is in the tray

Quick answer

African pygmy hedgehogs can be persuaded to use a tray for most of their toileting, but they will never be reliably clean the way a cat is. They toilet while they are moving, which is why almost every hedgehog owner ends up cleaning a wheel every morning.

The more valuable half of the exercise is what you do with the result. A hedgehog is nocturnal, hides pain well, and is usually asleep whenever you are awake, so the tray and the wheel are the main channel through which it tells you it is unwell. Learning what the droppings should look like is worth more than any behaviour you can train.

Training a hedgehog to anything works through food and repetition at its own waking time, which is the evening, not the afternoon.

• Hedgehogs defecate while walking and running, so wheel soiling is normal and not a training failure.
• A tray placed where the animal already goes will succeed; a tray placed where you would like it to go will not.
• Never use clumping clay cat litter with a hedgehog.
• Green, slimy droppings are a recognised early warning sign in this species and deserve a vet call.
• Blood in the tray is more often urinary or uterine in a hedgehog than intestinal, and intact females are the group to worry about.

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Do not use clumping clay litter, cedar shavings, or scented litter in a hedgehog enclosure.

Clumping clay swells with moisture. It sticks to the genital area, particularly in males, where it hardens and causes obstruction and injury, and it forms a solid mass if any is eaten. Cedar and unkilned pine release aromatic compounds that irritate the airways of a small animal that has its nose at substrate level all night. Scented products add fragrance to a species that navigates almost entirely by smell.
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Decide in 60 seconds

Why hedgehogs are hard to litter train

Sanitation behaviour in animals is usually about protecting a nest. Rabbits and rats keep a latrine area because a fouled burrow is a health and predation problem for a species that lives in one place.

Hedgehogs do not live like that. In the wild they cover ground all night, use different daytime resting spots, and have no particular investment in any one nest. There has been no pressure to develop the neat, corner-using habit that makes litter training easy in other species.

The practical consequence is that a hedgehog will often begin to defecate mid-stride, without stopping. On a wheel, that means the mess goes round with the wheel and the animal runs through it, which is where the smeared wheel and dirty feet come from.

What you can influence is where the animal spends its time and where the easiest surface is. Hedgehogs do tend to use particular parts of an enclosure more heavily, usually near the wheel and along walls, and a tray placed in those spots collects most of the output without the animal having to learn anything at all.

Setting up a tray that works

Watch first, place second.

Spend three or four nights noting which corners are being soiled. Almost all hedgehogs concentrate in one or two areas, and those areas are where the tray goes. Placing a tray in the corner you would prefer, and then waiting, wastes weeks.

Put a tray directly under and behind the wheel.

This is the single most effective piece of the setup. A shallow tray, or a tray plus a washable mat, under the wheel catches what falls and makes the daily clean-up a lift and a rinse rather than a scrub.

Use a low-sided tray.

Hedgehogs are short-legged and poor climbers. A high lip means the animal walks past rather than in. A shallow tray, a corner tray designed for small animals, or a plain baking tray all work.

Seed it.

Move a few of the animal's own droppings into the fresh tray after each clean for the first week. Scent marks the location far more effectively than positioning does.

Choose the litter carefully.

Unscented paper-based pellets, plain shredded paper, or paper bedding are the safest choices. Avoid clumping clay entirely. Avoid cedar and non-kiln-dried pine. Avoid corn cob, which supports mould growth and can be eaten. Avoid sand, which is abrasive on the plantar surface and dusty at nose height.

Keep the wheel washable and wash it daily.

A solid-surface wheel with a removable stand, cleaned every morning, is not negotiable in a hedgehog enclosure. Dried waste on a wheel is unpleasant to remove and keeps the animal's feet in contact with it all night.

A layout that puts the tray where the animal already goes, and keeps the wheel over a washable surface, does most of the work.

What normal hedgehog droppings look like

Dark brown to nearly black, firm enough to pick up in one piece, cylindrical and often slightly tapered at one end.

Fragments of insect exoskeleton are normal and expected in a hedgehog eating insects. Small shiny black or brown pieces are undigested chitin, not parasites.

Volume tracks intake. A hedgehog eating a normal amount produces a fairly consistent amount overnight, and a sudden drop is a stronger signal than any change in appearance.

Colour tracks diet more than people expect. Coloured kibble, beetroot, carrot and some fruit will all tint droppings, and this is the first thing to eliminate before assuming disease. Food-related colour is uniform, the droppings are otherwise normal in shape and consistency, and it resolves when the food does.

The changes that matter

Green with mucous.

This is the classic hedgehog warning sign and it deserves attention rather than a wait-and-see. Green mucous-covered stool means material is moving through the gut too fast for bile pigments to be broken down, and the mucous coating means the intestinal lining is irritated. Causes include stress, a sudden diet change, bacterial or protozoal infection, internal parasites, and early systemic illness. A single unusual dropping after a stressful evening may mean nothing. Repeated green mucous stools mean a vet.

Diarrhoea.

Any unformed stool that persists beyond a day matters, because a hedgehog does not carry much fluid reserve. The usual causes are a food change made too quickly, too many mealworms or other fatty insects, a bacterial upset, or parasites. Insects from the garden or from a non-food source are a common route in.

Blood.

This is the one owners most often mis-attribute. Fresh blood found in a hedgehog's tray or smeared on bedding frequently comes from the urinary or reproductive tract rather than the intestine, and in an intact female the single most likely cause is uterine disease, which is common in this species. Bladder stones and cystitis are also frequent. Do not try to distinguish urinary from intestinal blood at home; photograph it, collect the bedding, and get the animal seen.

Black and tarry.

Digested blood from higher in the gut. Take it seriously even in an otherwise bright animal.

Straining with little or nothing produced.

Constipation, an obstruction, or a urinary problem. All three need veterinary assessment, and the urinary version is time-critical.

Nothing at all.

An empty tray after a full night means the animal did not eat. In a cool room, that is often an attempted hibernation, which African pygmy hedgehogs do not survive well because they are a tropical species and do not enter true hibernation properly. A cool, sluggish, unresponsive hedgehog with no output needs gradual warming and a vet call.

What changes the picture

Age. Young hedgehogs going through the change of quills often have looser stool for a period, but quilling should not produce green mucous or blood. Older hedgehogs are more likely to have dental disease, tumours and kidney problems, all of which change output.

Sex and neutering status. Intact females are the group in which blood should trigger an immediate uterine suspicion. Intact males can produce a normal preputial discharge that stains bedding and is sometimes mistaken for blood.

Diet. A hedgehog moved between kibbles too fast will produce loose stool for days. Insect-heavy diets change both colour and volume. Wild-caught insects introduce parasites and are the reason many hedgehog keepers only use commercially bred feeders.

Temperature. A cool enclosure slows the gut, reduces appetite and reduces output before the animal looks obviously cold. If output has fallen, check the enclosure temperature before anything else.

Recent handling and change. A house move, a new room, a new person, or a change of enclosure will produce a night or two of altered droppings in some hedgehogs. That is stress-related and should resolve.

Wheel access. Removing a wheel changes both the amount of exercise and the pattern of toileting, and can genuinely constipate a hedgehog that is used to running.

The other half of the picture. A hedgehog that is eating, running and settling normally alongside an unusual dropping is in a different position from one that has also gone quiet.

Where the usual advice goes wrong

"Use cat litter, it is designed for this."

Most cat litter is designed to clump, and clumping is exactly the property that makes it dangerous around a low-slung animal that walks through its own tray. If it is being marketed on absorbency and odour control, it is probably the wrong product.

"Take the wheel out until it learns."

Removing the wheel removes the exercise a hedgehog needs, contributes to obesity, and often produces the constipation the owner then worries about. Clean the wheel instead.

"Punish it or move it to the tray when you catch it."

Hedgehogs do not connect a correction with an act they are mid-way through, and being picked up mid-toilet is startling enough to make an anxious animal ball up and become harder to handle generally. Move the tray, not the animal.

"Bathe it every time the feet are dirty."

Frequent full baths dry out hedgehog skin and contribute to flaking. A shallow foot soak in plain warm water for a minute or two deals with dirty feet without stripping the skin.

"Green poo just means it ate something green."

Very few things a pet hedgehog eats will turn stool green, and the mucous coating that usually comes with it is not a food effect. Treat it as a gut sign.

The routine that catches problems early

Check the tray and the wheel every morning at the same time, before you clean them. Look at what is there rather than removing it on autopilot.

Note three things: how much, what colour, what consistency. That is enough to catch nearly everything early.

Weigh weekly on a gram scale. Output changes and weight changes together are far more informative than either alone.

Record the enclosure temperature daily. Most unexplained drops in appetite and output in this species are temperature problems.

Photograph anything unusual on a plain white surface with a coin or a ruler beside it. Droppings degrade quickly, and a photograph taken at 7am is far more use than a description given at 5pm.

What never to do

Do not use clumping clay litter, scented litter, cedar shavings, or corn cob.

Do not remove the wheel as a training tool.

Do not scrub a hedgehog's whole body every time the feet are dirty.

Do not assume blood is intestinal. Get it looked at, and mention the animal's sex and neutering status when you call.

Do not treat a hedgehog with any wormer, antiparasitic or antibiotic intended for another species, and do not use leftover medication. Dosing in this species is specific and several common small-animal products are not appropriate.

Do not let an enclosure get cold in the hope the animal will "sleep more". Attempted hibernation in an African pygmy hedgehog is a medical emergency, not a rest.

Do not clean the whole enclosure and the tray to sterility every day. Some of the animal's own scent needs to remain or the tray stops working and the animal becomes unsettled.

When to get help

Contact a vet who sees hedgehogs the same day for repeated green mucous droppings, any diarrhoea lasting more than a day, any blood, black tarry stool, straining with nothing produced, or visible parasites.

Go immediately for a hedgehog that is cool to the touch, sluggish, unable to uncurl properly, or has produced nothing overnight and is not eating.

Book a routine appointment for a gradual change in output over weeks, for persistent soft stool that has not resolved after returning to the previous diet, and for any intact female of middle age or older, since uterine disease is common enough in this species that many vets discuss spaying preventively.

A hedgehog that eats, runs, produces normal output and settles afterwards is giving you all four readings you need.

Bring a fresh refrigerated sample, photographs taken on a white surface with something for scale, the exact diet including the kibble brand and any recent change, the source of any insects fed, the daily enclosure temperature readings, the weight record, the animal's age and sex and whether it is neutered, and how long the change has been going on. A faecal test, a urine sample and imaging are the usual next steps, and having the sample in your hand shortens the process considerably.