People often meet hedgehogs outside the city or in their summer cottages in the summer, and one of the most popular treats they offer to the animals is milk. We decided to check whether it is worth feeding hedgehogs with dairy products.
On the Internet you can find many stories about how people, having met hedgehogs, feed their milk and dairy products. Users question and answer services are interested, what you can feed hedgehogs, and they also often receive advice to pour milk for them. They ask, whether these animals drink milk, and on Yandex.Q. In the comments on social networks you can find hot discussions that our grandmothers fed hedgehogs milk and everything was fine with the animals. Similar advice can be found even on websites zoos.
Contrary to popular belief, you cannot feed hedgehogs milk. Experts also talk about this Moscow Zoo, and experts environmental portals, and representatives "Mospriroda", And veterinarians. The fact is that hedgehogs, like other animals, feed on milk only in early childhood; it is not included in the diet of adults. In addition, hedgehogs are lactose intolerant and do not have the enzymes necessary to break it down. If you offer a hedgehog milk, he will happily drink it, but then he will feel unwell: the animal may develop diarrhea, which can lead to severe dehydration and even death. The same applies to other dairy products - yoghurt, cottage cheese, cheese, sour cream.
Newborn hedgehogs still drink milk up to six weeks of age, but cow's milk, which is most often found in our refrigerators, is not suitable for them. If you find hedgehogs abandoned by their mother, experts advise feed them goat or sheep milk, as it contains almost no lactose. Artificial cat or dog milk substitutes are also suitable.
Adult hedgehogs are insectivores and in the wild they eat caterpillar larvae, insects, snails, slugs and even small rodents and frogs. It is quite difficult to create a complete diet for a hedgehog at home. However, experts recommend feed hedgehogs with raw meat or fish (peeled from skin and bones), as well as dried mealworms, chafer larvae, grasshoppers - all this can be bought at a pet store. There are also ready-made foods for hedgehogs that include all the necessary microelements. You can add plant foods to your diet - vegetables, fruits, berries.
Thus, if a hedgehog wanders into your summer cottage or you decide to keep it as a pet, you should never give it milk or feed it dairy products; in the worst case, this can lead to the death of the animal. You can treat a hedgehog to raw meat or fish, although in the summer in the wild, hedgehogs do an excellent job of getting food themselves.
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