Hamworthy Hedgehog Rescue

Metabolic Bone Disease (MBD)

We’ve just had it confirmed that the hoglet with his leg stuck out has a pathological distal femoral fracture. A pathologic fracture is a broken bone that’s caused by a disease, rather than an injury.

Some conditions weaken your bones, which makes them more likely to break. The usual one in hedgehogs is Metabolic Bone Disease (MBD) which is caused by a lack of calcium in the body.

The most common cause of this is from an Imbalance of calcium, phosphorus, and Vitamin D3 in their diet, which can lead to soft or brittle beaks, bone fractures or deformities, appetite loss, lethargy, pain, and if untreated, a slow and painful death.

Please do not feed hedgehogs with mealworms, sunflower hearts or peanuts – these foods are not the natural diet of hedgehogs, and are too high in phosphorous. Long term effects of feeding incorrectly can cause injuries such as this poor hoglet now has.

Feeding a balanced diet is essential, and the easiest way of providing this is by feeding cat biscuits or cat/dog meat. There is no need to feed ‘treats’ to hedgehogs, they are wild animals.

If you care about hedgehogs, please do not feed them mealworms, you could be slowly killing them.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More Articles

Three very poorly hogs

Three very poorly hogs in one after the other this evening; One with bite wounds which are infected, including one through the right eye, head wound, dehydrated, emaciated and covered in ticks. Currently in one of the ICU/recovery units, in critical condition.

Read More »
Hogs
Jim

Adder bite

Winston, the hog that came in yesterday with infected puncture wounds (believed to be from dog bites), and covered in flystrike was euthanised last night as the vet felt his wounds were too severe for him to recover from. Bailley, one of the other hogs that came in last night with infected bite marks all around her face is still very poorly in the ICU/recovery unit. The vet cleaned her wounds out last night and gave her antibiotics. It is believed she has been bitten by an Adder.

Read More »
Hogs
Jim

New Entry

A new entry this morning – male hedgehog – has lost one eye to apparent old injury and now gone blind in the other eye. He was found blundering around, bumping into things during the daytime.

Read More »