HELP! quill loss!

If she's of quilling age, then she's probably just quilling, if she's not, then I'd do a mite check. She may also have dry skin.

One of my guys wasn't very crabby when he was quilling. Granted, he was never as friends as Maiche is, but he didn't seem to mind us touching him or his crawling around (and pooping on) everything.

Runefaust said:

Maiche is now 3 months old, and pardon my ignorance, but I really don't know the quill loss rate when quilling.

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It varies between hedgies. Some of them only lose a 2 or 3 a day (sometimes even less!) and some of them lose 10-15 or more. At three months, I would suspect that she is quilling, especially if she's not scratching herself.

This page has some more information on quilling: http://hedgehogcentral.com/quilling.shtml.

Hehe

You can do a mite test on her. (Gently!) Rub/pet her with a black t-shirt (or let her walk around/cuddle with it for a while on your lap) and then look if there's any flakes. If they're moving they she has mites. If they're not, then she has dry skin (if it's just a couple of flakes, I wouldn't worry about it).

Another to check for mites is to look at one of the quills. If there's a bulb on the end of it, then she's just quilling. If there's no bulb, then it's probably mites.

http://hedgehogcentral.com/mites.shtml

Again, it sounds to me as if it's just her quilling and she's handling it very well-- but it's never a bad idea to safe than sorry =)

No problem! I'm glad it helped =)

If you want to combat the dry skin, add a drop of flaxseed oil in her food once or twice a week and/or put some olive oil in her baths (although, one of my guys will drink the bath water if I put olive oil in it :lol: )

hehe :lol:

She probably felt very greasy

Really? I actually got that from the HHC link I posted.

Sorry for this mis-information!!!

I actually just talked to Bryan about this, and he said that a bulb-less quill IS, in fact, one indication (of many) of mites. I also asked him if a bulb-less quill could mean something internal is going on, to which he replied probably not-- bulb-less quills are usually an indication of something happening on the outside (injury, mites, etc.).

The scratch test is still the better method, in my opinion...

Sorry for any confusion-- I hope this cleared it up a little. If not, I hope it made you come up with more questions

That's a very good way of putting it =)