While your hedgehog may throw quills at you or other household pets, these quills are not poisonous. Your hedgehog will start quilling around the sixth to eighth week. During natural quilling, your pet will lose about twenty quills per day, but this number will decrease with age. On the other hand, these numbers may increase if your pet is stressed, has a hormonal imbalance, or inadequate diet, which is why you should monitor the number of quills your pet loses.
Quilling is generally painful as the new quills, which are thicker, grow through the thinner holes left by the old quills. These quills may also have rough surfaces, further worsening the pain. During this process, your hedgehog will be unsociable, and you should limit physical contact. You should, however, inspect it for ingrown quills and slowly pull them, then disinfect the area. Pain during natural quilling is normal, and you can calm your pet with an oatmeal bath.
You should also use small amounts of oil to prevent skin problems. In addition to natural quilling, your hedgehog may also lose its quills due to stress, inadequate feeding, and hormonal imbalance. Poor nutrition will cause your pet to lose its quills and be unable to replace them. Stressing your pet through poor housing, loud noises, and over-handling will increase the number of quills shed in a day.
You should also limit interactions between your hedgehog and other household pets. This is because your hedgie might feel threatened, especially with prolonged interactions, and lose more quills. If you suspect your hedgehog has an abnormal quilling, you should contact your vet to rule out the above causes and treat your pet. Quilling is a natural process that every hedgehog has to go through during its lifetime. Quilling starts during adolescence when the hedgehog losses its small fine quills, and new thicker quills start to grow.
During adulthood, the hedgehog will start to lose fewer quills. It will be a painful process for the hedgehog, and you will have to comfort your hedgehog. Other factors can influence your hedgehog to lose its quills.
They include stress, mites, hormonal imbalances, and insufficient diet. Always check the number of quills lost in a day to determine whether the hedgehog is losing the correct number of quills. Take your hedgehog to the veterinarian if you believe there is something wrong with its quilling. As already mentioned, the process is more or less like losing a tooth for humans. The best you can do during the quilling process is to keep the quilling hedgie as comfortable as possible.
It is also worth noting that quilling, your hedgie may not feed as much as it did before. This is especially the case during the first few days. With time though, the hedgie will feed as usual. Then by all means remember to get rid of all quills once they fall off the hedgie. Hedgehogs have quills but do not use them for defense; hence, there is no need to trim them. Trimming these quills will predispose your pet to infection since the quills will remain open and hollow.
Instead, you should allow your pet to shed the quills naturally. Quilling will begin from adolescence and extend towards old age. You should monitor quilling to ensure your pet does not shed too many quills per day. Abnormal quilling will occur if your pet is stressed, sick, or suffering from hormonal imbalance or nutritional deficiency.
Hi I'm Bal together with my daughter Jinnee, we've created this website about hedgehogs. We've learnt a lot looking after our hedgehog Hynee and share our knowledge, tips and tricks. The pygmy hedgehog is the most popular species of hedgehogs kept as pests. If you keep a hedgehog as a pet, you will be interested in knowing how this animal can coexist with others. As much as Ever since I've had my hedgehog, the one thing I found fascinating is his behavior and the wide range of emotions he can experience.
Whilst, I haven't seen all the emotions, I decided to find out In their place, larger quills will start to grow in. Hedgies will go through this process at least twice over the course of their lives. It can be rather startling at first when you see just how much bigger they are! The first two are the most predictable. The process of hedgehog quilling can vary depending on a number of factors. Genetic components, age, and care level are the most common. Some hedgehogs are done quilling in a couple of weeks while others can take over a month.
You can check their back gently to see if it looks like they still have a lot more to go. Hedgehog quilling can definitely be quite uncomfortable. Imagine if you had to push large quills through tiny openings in your skin! Some hedgehogs have it worse than others depending on the size and rigidity of their spines. Sometimes a quill will not come out cleanly which will be a little more painful. Eventually, it should sort itself out but might take longer to grow in cleanly than all the others.
In some rare cases, a new spine might find itself unable to grow in cleanly for a significant period of time. This can lead to long-term discomfort and potentially bleeding.
These situations typically need intervention to resolve. Even the smoothest hedgehog quilling can still cause discomfort due to the nature of how these animals act.
Hedgehogs like to be active and will naturally bump their quills into objects while they move. Some lose a lot of quills at this age; others lose a large number of quills at months of old. The cycle of quilling actually occurs every 75 days for their entire life. And quilling can last from a few days up to a couple of weeks. But the most significant quilling is during the weeks, which may run the entire time, or it may start and stop and then start again. You may experience both because it varies with each hedgehog.
Then there is another quilling period that occurs right after weeks of quilling. But it is less significant compared to weeks quilling. All young hedgehog quills more or less at an early age until they are adults, which is normal.
They may drop one to two quill in a while. As a new owner, now you know when and how often do they quill. But this quilling process is a lengthy, painful process where all spines have to grow through their skin. So hedgehog may show major attitude change during the quilling period.
There are also some problems during this painful process that all hedgehogs feel. But being the lovely owner, you can comfort them and reduce their irritation. Keep reading! All young hedgehog quills. But how do you know they are quilling? Quilling and natural shedding are not the same. If there is a tiny ball on the end of the lost quills, this is a good healthy indicator. As is the appearance of generally healthy skin aside from some minor dermatitis.
With regular hedgehog quilling symptoms. And this doesn't just happen before the one year mark or a little bit past it. Just like any other mammal, they could shed one or two quills here and there throughout their life time. New quills should begin to form within a few days with normal quilling. Sometimes extremely dry skin, fungal infections, or stressful environments can slow down or stop quills from growing back.
Also, be on the look out for in-grown quills, if those appear you'll see proof of the quill trying to make its way through the skin. Usually this looks like a red bump with the end of a quill trying to poke out of the epidermis. These usually work themselves out, but sometimes you may need to nudge out the stubborn ones. Try to carefully use sterilized tweezers and pull it out, you'll most likely reveal a curved quill.
When done, apply some anti-bacterial ointment with a cotton swab. If you are uncomfortable doing this yourself, your veterinarian is always the best professional to contact. The high emotional and physical stress level during this time causes double the skin irritations. Hedgehog owners report that adding a humidifier to their room helps significantly.
If your hedgie's quills are growing back and their skin is just dry and flaky, then yes it is normal. Comfort is key to battling this condition, and here are some other tips we recommend:. If you've ever suffered from a painful pimple, hangnail, or ingrown hair, you know it hurts and is a little distressing. Hopefully you can empathize based on some of your own experiences.
Here are some tips to rely on during this sore and uncomfortable phase:. Usually with mites or ring worms, the skin will appear dry and flaky too. And, the fallen quills will not look as they should; they may appear to have a mushy or broken end. Your hedgie should never have bald spots for long, signs of new growth should be present within a week. Skin that appears red, bumpy, or gooey deserves professional expert medical attention if you cannot control it.
With normal hedgehog quilling symptoms, the skin appears healthy underneath the dry skin and the spines should be growing back nicely. A pocket microscope with LED that is about 60xx magnification power can be useful to detect mites. Wipe off some of the white flakes, place them on a dark surface and see if they move using your eye or your microscope. Always see an experienced vet though.
0コメント