 Hi everyone, so today I'm going to be going over Quilling with you and I have Draco with me who actually has his back to us. Unfortunately he's munching on some eggs. To start off, Quilling is a process that hedgehogs go through that is similar to a baby teething. They do lose the vast majority of their quills and they grow back over time and this process typically happens within their first year of life. Now there have been some cases of quilling later on but it's very rare and typically if your hedgehog is losing large masses of quills after a year it is generally explained by something else. During the quilling process their quills will fall out and you will likely find them around the cage and they will typically fall out in large quantities. This is some of blazes quills that I happen to save when he went through his quilling. It isn't all of them by any means but I will show you. Okay so typically when a hedgehog loses its quills naturally it will have that tiny little bulb there at the end not always but typically a natural lost quill will have the bulb at the end unlike something like mites. Now that isn't a guaranteed way to tell the difference between mites and quilling at all. The only real way to tell the difference is educated guesses and of that visit. Quilling tends to come in spirts so they tend to have a really bad quilling when they are still hoglets with their mother and then they tend to have another one sort of midway through their first year and then another one towards the end of their year. This is like in general this isn't something that oh when they turn six months they will quill that's not the case for every hedgehog at all that just some hedge hogs tend to be like that and some don't. Now during quilling hedgehogs tend to exhibit some unwanted behaviors such as being extremely cranky. Now this is the same with children who are teething or even like puppies that are teething. This is because the process is painful for them and when you touch their backs it's uncomfortable. Now I do suggest while your hedgehog is quilling that you keep the back touching where their quills are. I suggest keeping that to a minimum and handling them mostly on their belly. My number one piece of advice if you're having similar issues with your hedgehog sort of developing behaviors where it's acting like it's not liking you or things like that is to consider what's going on with them and whether you can help them. I'm not entirely sure what he's doing. Flipping his bag inside out I guess. The best way to help them is with time and patience and keeping their skin moisturized. Their skin will get dry. It's sort of a given. Normally I would suggest hella-ac but I even have a video on him a lack but unfortunately himlla-ac was discontinued and there have been a couple retailers that can still get it and a couple vets but for the most part it isn't offered to the general public which is unfortunate. I know some people that are working on it but until then I would suggest coconut oil or any other non-toxic edible oil that you can put on their skin. Really coconut oil tends to work the best out of all of the ones I've used. I'm gonna add just a little bit. You can either use like a medicine dropper and drop it right on their skin in the bath or you can use like a little medicine syringe or you can just add some coconut oil to their rinse water. You want to be careful not to overdo it. You don't want them to be overly greasy because their skin does still need to breathe. You don't want to overload it because that can cause other issues so if they feel overly greasy you want to rinse them again until they don't. You can also do things like oatmeal baths which I will hopefully have a video up on soon. Oatmeal baths are exactly what they sound like. They're the same way you'd give one to like a baby. One of the best ways to tell if your hedgehog is actually quilling and not having some other type of issue is by seeing if they have the equal amount of quills they're losing coming in and you'll be able to see them poking up through the skin usually. If they are having bald patches where no quills are coming in they need to go to the vet because that is something else. If they are suffering from very very severe skin issues like not just dry skin but severe cracked flaky skin you'll want to take them in. If you suspect mites at all again they need to go into the vet. That is a vet treated thing. You cannot treat that at home. There are a number of things that can cause quill loss and quilling is just one of them but it is of course a common one of them that every hedgehog owner will have to go through with their hedgehog as long as you've gotten them within the first year of their life. Again it can happen later on but generally the first year of the life is when you see the most amount of quilling and struggle with the most amount of issues from it. He apparently has somewhere to go. I don't know where. Beyond quilling year round hedgehogs will shed the same way a human sheds hair. Not as much hair as human shed but still a fair bit. They will shed one or two quills a day or a few a week. It depends on the hedgehog. They will also shed a little more. When the seasons change you'll notice some extra quills laying around as long as it isn't a continual quill loss with no quill growth. It is an issue but it is normal for them to shed just like we shed hair. They also shed hair especially in the summer you'll notice that their hair will start fall off. There isn't a whole lot to be said about quilling because it is a fairly simple process. They lose their quills. They grow them back. Some hedgehogs even change colors after that especially if they start to snowflake which means that their quills grow back in partially white. It is a fairly simple process. There isn't a whole lot to be said about it other than be patient with them. It is a difficult process for them. It is a fairly painful process for them and in turn it can be a fairly difficult and painful process for us humans as well. It's just part of being a hedgehog owner or parent depending on how you look at it. If you have any questions feel free to leave them down below and I of course will answer them and thank you all for watching. I hope you enjoyed and learned something from it and hopefully I see you next time. Until then, bye!