Quill Tips

[KingBoris]

Okay, the last few days have been very stressful. We just found out Boris has what might be an upper respiratory infection. The vet didn't put him under annestia, though, because she wants him to get more strong. So she gave him an anti-biotic and Science Diet A/D (which I'm supposed to syringe feed him).

Anyway, besides dealing with that, I noticed last night, while I was holding the other one (who is in a different room and I wash my hands between handlings), I found two tips of quills. Has anyone ever noticed this or had this happened? I'm used to finding a whole quill, not part of one.

[HamorHollow]

Just the tips? Nope, I've never seen that. The only thing I could think of is that it might be diet related. What are/ were they eating?

-K

[hularious]

never seen just the tips either. monty's quilling and i see the whole thing.

if it's just the tips, could it be a potenial mite problem? not sure though, everyone tells me if you see the little ball at the base of the quill, then it's ok...tips, that's something i'm curious about too.

[Nancy]

Our Freckles had a bunch of quill tips break off one time. We couldn't figure out what was causing it as they were all along his one side and knowhere else. We finally discovered he was going into his tiny igloo and turning around in the doorway that was breaking the quills off.
We tried him with a bigger igloo but he refuses to give up the little one. He still breaks off the odd quill. :)

[KingBoris]

He doesn't seem to have any other signs of mites. I feed him the Mazuri Insectivore diet (per the recomendation of my vet) and I add vitamin drops to his water. The same as I have been since I've gotten him and Boris.

[HamorHollow]

He doesn't seem to have any other signs of mites. I feed him the Mazuri Insectivore diet (per the recomendation of my vet) and I add vitamin drops to his water. The same as I have been since I've gotten him and Boris.

Ditch the insectivore diet. It's not that great and the hedgehogs aren't really a big fan of it.

Go into some of the threads in the diet section of this forum. No sense in typing it all out yet again.

-K

[KingBoris]

Thanks for infoming me about the Mazuri insectivore diet. I guess when the vet told me to use that, it didn't occurr to me to question it (especially since the two vets prior were pretty bad vets).