guess who just gave birth?

Quills just gave birth to another litter of hoglets yesterday. Not surprisingly though, I was expecting the delivery date to be within this week anyway.

But the wonderful news is, this time Quills gave birth to 5 hoglets!

Didn't expect to have so big a number in one delivery.

It's actually the first time I managed to see how the hoglets look like in their first day of birth, the previous time I was away for work in Sabah and missed the first 4 days of their lives, how they grow up from day to day.

And my other half jokes that this time around, I'll get to spend a full 2 weeks with them, considering she's going away for training starting from next Monday. ; )

Although my schedule has been pretty tight lately, at least I'll get to monitor their growth from day to day until the hoglets are big enough to be handled.

Hope to see some difference in colours this batch, and perhaps a pure white or two. : )

bye bye hoglets...

Well, I was supposed to blog about my Valentine dinner, or ZH's wedding, whichever, but unfortunately the camera's not with me and the photo images are yet to be transferred to the computer, so I'm blogging about something else in the meantime.

On the night of ZH's wedding, someone called up and expressed serious interest in purchasing my last hedgehog on the same night, and after much hesitation (it's Valentine's Day and a close friend's wedding for Pete's sake!), I finally decided to have the deal done, and my last hoglet finally left to a new owner's home at 12.30am. : )

While I would say that breeding hedgehogs wouldn't really give you very good profit, at least it has covered up my expenses when I first started rearing. But anyway, it isn't really for all the money; nobody gets rich by breeding livestocks and selling them, personally it has been a wonderful 4 months I have had watching the hoglets grow from an inch long into the size of my palm. I'm just glad to find a hobby which can give me a little return in cash to be 'reinvested' to my hobby.

I've mated my pair of hedgehogs last week and hopefully this round, I'd be able to breed the mother's colour which didn't happen in the last batch of hoglets.

On a different topic, I've finally put the pen on paper for another investment, ending my 6-month monitoring and research, and three weeks of continuous negotiation. Now it's time to shift my attention to another location and begin the tedious works all over again.

Next post will be either Valentine's or ZH's wedding. : )

hoglets all grown up...

About 10 weeks ago, Quills gave birth to three little female hoglets.

Considering that the first mating session didn't work out, I was somewhat not expecting her to be pregnant during the second mating session when Cactus looked to be injured and there were stains of blood on the body less than 48 hours putting both of them together.

30 over days later on 21 Oct, while I was away in Tawau, I received an unexpected call from my girlfriend telling me that I've became a grandfather of three.

Last Tuesday, the first hoglet left for her new home.

The other two hoglets will soon follow suit when suitable buyers come along.

It has been a wonderful 10 weeks watching these few little 'rambutans' grow from the size of my thumb into the size of my palm.



Hope my hoglets will all end up with loving and caring owners, who'll be able to shower them with lots of affection!

while i was away...

Hmm, I guess nothing much happened back here. Almost didn't make it back home to KL after I lost my temporary visa slip. Luckily the immigration officers were a bit lenient and let me off with a warning.

Oh, and while I was away? My hedgehog gave birth to three beautiful hoglets. :)

Can't believe I missed the first few days of the babies growing up, and with nobody at home knowing what to do with them!

Finally got to see them tucked nicely in the hidebox sleeping late yesterday night when I finally reached home, and thankfully all hoglets and the mom are safe and healthy. I guess when the mommy hedgehog gets less protective I'll be able to take several photos of the 'rambutans' (as my family calls them) to be uploading into this blog. :P

introducing cactus & quills...

I have promised to upload photos of my hedgehogs and after a little effort, ehem... I proudly present to you, Cactus & Quills!

Cactus

Cactus is the male hedgehog I brought back home in March from a home breeder. He has good temperaments and can fall asleep on anyone's lap. Picky eater, but will snap up mealworms when in sight! Cactus is the more 'athletic' one between the two hedgehogs I have, he'll make sure he gets enough exercise by running in the wheels every night (and leaves his poop all over the wheel). Cactus also likes to get his head stuck inside a toilet paper roll and bang around. ;) Quite a clumsy hedgehog, always tumbling around in his cage.

Quills

Quills was brought back roughly 2 weeks ago. She is considered quite grumpy and would rather be left alone in her cage, but once she gets outside she'll wander off very fast. Quills' rather friendly and tame when you have food in your hands, she'll come to you uninvited. ;) A bit on the plump side as she doesn't really know what to do with the wheels, the only thing she plays with is the bell ball which she keeps knocking around late at night.

Will need to take some time to study their behaviours, these two young hedgehogs are wonderful pets to have, and I learn new things about them as days go by. Honestly, hedgehogs are not suitable pets for many people because they're solitary animals, you don't get to play with them daily like dogs or cats, and they are unlikely to show any sort of emotions. But once you get to know each of their personalities, you'll fall in love with them. :)

my second hedgehog...

3 months after getting Cactus, I've finally decided to get a female hedgehog, first step towards my plan of becoming a hobbyist breeder.

I have reserved a 4 month-old female hedgehog, a solid snowflake with dominant white quills from another fellow hedgehog enthusiast. Consider my lady luck because I was scouting for a platinum-coloured, but an all white snowflake will be a beauty as well.

Will be getting the hedgehog this Saturday if nothing goes wrong, after some time I'll be posting pictures of the new addition here in my blog...:)

tortoise...

I've uploaded quite some photos of Cactus lately, it'll be biased if I didn't put in any photos of my beloved tortoise as well.

Photo uploading will do for now, lately I'm a bit too busy to think of proper stuff to blog about. Things may change though after the Bangkok trip end of this month.

So for the time being, enjoy some tortoise photos!

whisked away...

I took the last Friday off and left for a short relaxing trip to Malacca. Time to take a short break from work before the busy season approaches. And it's 0.5 of another resolution fulfilled for the year 2008.

Took off around late noon and arrived Malacca Town in less than 2 hours, my girlfriend and I went straight to Jonker Walk's dessert house for a nice bowl of durian cendol. Hanged around until 6pm and when our ex-housemates were off work, we met up for a satay celup session, slurp!

After dinner, we headed back to Jonker Walk for a little shopping spree, but I was obviously very exhausted that night, my legs were wobbly and my eyes were watery even though the clock has not hit 11pm yet. Spent the night at my ex-housemates' rented apartment, which was quite comfy (and those buggers are renting it for RM2XX a month, OMG how the prices differ from KL properties!!!).

The following morning we headed back the street again for some chicken rice ball, before going to the infamous A Farmosa and the Santiago Fort. We took a trishaw ride around the Stadhuys just to kill time, before heading down to Muar to look for my ex-housemate (the same one, working in Malacca but went back to hometown in Muar). We again had some food fest, went for some char koay teow, pork and pork intestine satays and the last but not least, Muar's signature food otak-otak! Well, there's nothing much about the trip other than food, but when you travel for food you go for good food, hahahaha...

Meanwhile, I've captured a better picture of Cactus, this time with a decent camera.

Introducing, Cactus!!!

I like to pretend to look like some soft toy...

Uploaded a large image, but I reduced the quality because this blog kept returning errors when I tried uploading a bigger file size.

cactus...

Finally, some photos of my hedgehog...:)

I've decided to name this little bugger 'Cactus', for obvious reasons. He has a bitemark on his right ear, and I don't think it can fully recover and grow back the missing part. But this guy's still as handsome as ever.

Made him a tupperware home for snuggling during the day time.

Busy exploring and sniffing around in my room when I brought him up first time.

More interested in nibbling the tissue. Bad boy!

Trying to run away when I picked him up. This fella can't sit still.



After all the hassle, decided to take a nap and ignore me.

Yummy!!! Dinner time for Cactus. The bowl's always empty by the time I wake up in the morning.

Took these pictures using my camera phone, hence the bad quality. Wait till I bring home a DSLR, there'll be better shots for uploading...;)

Someone has offered me another female salt & pepper hedgehog, together with the cage, food, and the wheel as well, at quite a bargain price because he is moving and is no longer able to keep it. I'm still wondering if I should get it, will it be too early for me to have 2? I'm still learning new things with Cactus everyday, I doubt if a second one coming now would be a good time. Heck, today I spent half an hour chasing after the little bugger in the house when I took him out to clean his cage.

hoglet in the family...

It's working hours now but what the heck, now it's officially lunchtime and I'm gonna blog this anyway, hahahaha...

I went to collect my hoglet (baby hedgehog) from my breeder Dickson last night, boy, it was a tiring journey to drive all the way to Batu Caves. But thankfully, it was worth it.

Sat down at the KFC with Dickson and his girlfriend, and chatted on the basic necessities of this hoglet. Apparently the hoglet belongs to his cousin, and fortunately I reserved this young fella earlier because when the hoglet began quilling, this kiddo turned to be a beautiful salt & pepper snowflake, and his cousin must be thumping his chest, Dickson said his cousin claimed that if no one has reserved he wanted to keep it, hahaha... I'm lucky that Dickson kept his promise. It was originally more of a standard salt & pepper. Dickson confessed that this is by far his most beautiful hoglet he and his cousin managed to breed.

It had an injured right ear, part of it bitten off. Got it after a fight with siblings (what a loser). But anyhow, it'll be fine, in fact now I can recognize my hedgehog easily, hehe, still applying some medication though... And for a hoglet, it is unusually tame. When we first met this kiddo let me hold it and it doesn't ball up like other hedgehogs (hedgehogs recognize smells, and usually rolls itself into a ball when they see strangers or smell different stuff). It was already running around actively, and not making any hissing or puffing noises. Hahaha, I think it's my fate that I always end up with pets that are unusually tame. ;)

Reached home very late, and took the hoglet out so it can adapt to a new environment. Dickson said usually his hoglets take about a couple of days before they get used to the new surrounding, food and stuff. This little guy doesn't look like it needs time though, this morning when I woke up it already pooped all over the wheel I left in it's box.

No doubt I'll start posting pictures here when I have the time, but now it's back to work. I'll be attending a play tonight in PJ, entitled 'Broken' if I've not mistaken. Hope it turns out to be good. And tomorrow I'll be back to the alma mater to resolve some issues, you guys know what they are. So after that I'll be back home playing with my hoglet again!

torty torty...

Took some pictures with the tortoise last Sunday and edited into one piece. Enjoy the pictures!