Mites or just dry skin?

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Kaylarene13

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Sep 4, 2013
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I've noticed that my hedgehog will stop in the middle of it's play to hike it's leg up and furiously scratch it's side or behind it's ear. Is this Norman behavior? She does it once every 5 or so minutes. Maybe not that frequent but frequent enough to where I notice it just in our 30-45 minutes of play time. I figured maybe it would help if I gave her a bath and with me just having received my hedgehog about a week ago this was her first bath I've given her and I put her in the water and she kept slipping and accidentally got water up her nose and so me, feeling bad for her, snatch her up and cuddled her in the towel without having washed her... After she dried off I sat her back down and noticed that she may be scratching even worse now.. Did I make it worse by putting her in the water..? And how do I determine whether it is just dry skin or mites..? Thank you!
 
Water on its own can be drying, so it's possible, if there's a dry skin issue going on it was made momentarily better, but then worse. Fortunately, it sounds like you didn't use any soap/shampoo (which are very drying for hedgies -- even the baby shampoos are drying) - so that's good!

Next bath time:
Fill up the sink or tub (dish pans work well) about an inch maximum with warm water. Put down a washcloth on the bottom. Add oatmeal to the water (either put regular oatmeal in a sock and swish it around until the water is good and cloudy or use part of a packet of colloidal oatmeal that are sold in the health/beauty aisles). Get a small cup. Then add hedgie.

The washcloth on the bottom helps give hedgie something to stand on without slipping. It can also help dislodge poopboots as hedgie walks over it. The oatmeal helps relieve dry skin. Most of hedgie will be out of the water... use the small cup to scoop up some water and pour it down her back. Stay away from her head/ears with the water. You can use your other hand to help steady her. She's likely to climb up so that her front feet are on you and her rear feet are in the water. That's a great position for using the cup to pour the warm oatmeal water gently over and down her body. Bathe once a week max. Hedgies can go months (years even) without needing full baths like this if they aren't messy. Many require much more frequent footbaths (ie, enough water to cover the washcloth, but not much more). I had two that required daily footbaths.

Good job on the drying... snuggling in the towel is the best!

Dry skin vs mites can be tricky... very tricky - especially when it's at the very beginning of either. Certainly, if you see anything crawling around, bring her to the vet to get Revolution (NOT Ivomec/Ivomectin... stay away from the injectable... despite many vets saying it's safe and they know how to use it, there are so many horror stories about it). Many people will treat with Revolution even if they don't see little things crawling around and even if a skin scraping at the vet's office turns up negative.

On your own, one that that will help dry skin and won't make mites worse is a bit of flax seed oil. You can find it in the vitamin section. If you get the gel caps, then you have lots of doses. Just get a gel cap, poke a hole in it with a pin (or a quill that's fallen out), and squeeze a couple drops on her back. Go between the quills and directly on her skin if you can. If she's huffy, that's fine, just put it on her quills and it will flow down to her skin.

Some people will recommend vitamin e instead of flax seed oil. That's fine too. I just find that it's more sticky/doesn't flow and spread out as well as the flax seed oil.

Some folks will recommend putting drops of it into hedgie's final rinse after a bath. That's fine. I just find that it complicates things... you have this hedgie who just wants to be done with their much hated bath... and the human wants to add another step with a rinse? Haha...

Keep in mind that hedgies will scratch from time to time. Some things to watch out for that will help draw the line between normal scratching vs uh-oh there's a problem:
- skin that looks dry and flakey
- flakes coming off of hedgie (like dandruff flakes on humans)
- skin that looks red, rough, or irritated
- loss of quills that's resulting in either a thinning of the quill coat or bald patches
 
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