@amazingpetenclosures posted a fun “challenge”: before and after photos of your enclosur

@amazingpetenclosures posted a fun “challenge”: before and after photos of your enclosure(s). I dug up as much as I could find from when I started keeping hedgehogs several years back & up until now, but unfortunately couldn’t find a picture of my first enclosure which is a cage I’ve used for multiple hedgehogs (later on mainly as a spare for rescues/rehomes). 1. Yes, I have used fleece liners with hearts on it. Just one heart actually. I made them myself and the heart wasn’t planned, but I dropped a heat lamp on the liner and I hid the ugly burned spot by sewing a heart onto it. This was my first enclosure (the one I don’t have a better picture of). It was a simple rabbit cage, nothing special. The hoglet in the picture was my second hedgehog and the first one I tried fleece liners with. I used shavings before that but didn’t like them much. Because there was very little information in my native language on keeping hedgehogs and I didn’t know anyone in real life (besides the people I got mine from) who kept them, I started reading up on English info online (mainly from the US). Everyone was using fleece liners there so I thought that would be good for hedgehogs. If everyone’s using it (and claiming loose bedding is the devil) it’s probably gonna be good, right?2-3. I build my own C&C cage because I wanted something bigger, didn’t have an awful lot of money for an enclosure and again I saw a lot of people in the US use this type of cage (yes, I was still very much on the US bandwagon). Honestly? I hated it. It was inconvenient, incredibly difficult to heat, and SO UGLY. There was literally NOTHING positive about this cage except for the okay size perhaps. I’m pretty big on aesthetic and this was just a huge nah. I also ditched the fleece soon after because I didn’t like it - it got smelly real fast, I hated the unnatural look, and even with an added dig box I felt like it limited my hedgehog’s natural behaviour. I guess this is the moment where I started to get my common sense back (just kidding). But really - I think it’s something a lot of new keepers (of any species) do, and it’s a logical thing to do if you don’t have a lot of experience yourself; they almost blindly follow the advice of others especially if it’s a very large group telling you something’s wrong (e.g. me using shavings at first as opposed to fleece, which I was told was Not Done And Dangerous). When I started venturing more into different hedgehog communities of other countries, I noticed huge discrepancies between care (sometimes complete opposites even). I started mixing & matching what I thought was best for my animals.I switched to cardboard bedding called Finacard which is actually pretty nice and has always been one of my favourites (together with Back 2 Nature, which is not pictured here but what I’ve used as well). 4-5. The Ferret Nation! I went from 1 to 2 to 3 hedgehogs and a lack of floor space (for 3 enclosures) meant I had to find something I could stack. I had been dreaming of a more naturalistic approach but due to the type of cages I’d used so far I couldn’t really do anything more natural. I made an attempt with the fake plants and the wooden twigs (which I added to keep the bedding from falling out - didn’t really work. It was still quite messy). The FN cages were okay. They were still not easy to heat, but a plus side for me was them not being very wide (so they fit right next to my desk in my bedroom) but quite deep, which meant I could fit them there while still keeping the floor space for the animals.I’d been wanting vivs for ages but I knew it would be a waste of money to buy them now as I wouldn’t have enough room for them and I didn’t want to buy smaller ones, only to replace them later (these things are expensive).Unfortunately it was way too messy with the loose bedding and open bars combo and I decided to temporarily switch back to fleece. Part of it was because of the mess, but also because I wanted to give fleece one more try to see if it really made a difference on the behaviour of my hedgehogs (it did - negatively, so I still don’t like it, and it is one of the worst bedding you can choose for a hedgehog imo).6-7. Moving meant I could FINALLY get my vivs! (Bottom two are for my tenrecs, top one is for one of my hedgehogs). Waiting for them for so long actually had a positive side too, because I had plenty of time to prepare and work things out for keeping mammals bioactive: something I didn’t have experience with yet (although I did with reptiles and amphibians), and something that no one else - from what I could find, they probably exist - seemed to do. I actually managed to find one person after a while, but they sold their animal soon after so it ended up being a lot of trial and error anyway. I can’t remember how many people told me keeping mammals in a bioactive enclosure wouldn’t be doable. I got kicked out of two bioactive Facebook groups because I mentioned mammals and it was marked as a failure immediately. Fortunately there were also enthusiastic people and some even tried it for their own mammals, and with success! My approach to hedgehog husbandry changed a lot over the years - largely due to becoming more experienced of course, which means you can try out new things more comfortably. I mainly use science and my own common sense now. I still value the input of others of course, but I actively try to seek out questions myself and try to answer them so others might learn from it. Well, that’s what I hope anyway.The picture on the left is how I started out with my bio vivs, still relatively unsure of what would work or not. The one on the right is 10 months later with thriving enclosures and most importantly, thriving animals! My vivs have been up and running for a year now, my animals are doing great (and I finally got that aesthetic) and I don’t think I’m ever going back. -- source link

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