Hey guys.  Welcome back to Animal Wonders.  Today, we're gonna check with Prickle the hedgehog.

(Intro)

Prickle was moved to a new enclosure and she's been in here about six months.  Let's check it out.  She was previously housed on a nice thick layer of (?~0:25) and was pretty comfy, but I chose to change it to fleece for a number of reasons.  You can see she's hiding back here.  Hi, you.  Hi, Prickle, and she's sleeping because hedgehogs are nocturnal and it'll take her a little bit to wake up.  You can see she's bundled up in her little defensive position right now, and that's really normal for hedgehogs when you first wake them up because their instincts are taking over and there's saying, ahh, someone's trying to eat me.  As soon as she calms down a little bit and she smells my hand, she'll go ahead and uncurl.  

So the first reason I decided to move her to this bigger enclosure is because, well, it's bigger and she was a very active little girl.  Here she comes on out  Another reason is that she was starting to show signs of old age and she's having trouble moving through the deep substrate, so I wanted something that was easier for her to run around in.  I don't know if you can tell as she walked away, but she has a wobble in her step right now, and that's pretty normal for senior hedgehogs, so this surface is a lot easier for her to move and get to the places she wants to go, but it's nice and soft and she can grip to it as well so she won't slip.

Since the move, I've experienced a couple other benefits.  I can really see clearly what's going on with her, basically, what's coming out of her, so I can assess her health better, so with a quick look, I can see that she has some nice, healthy poops back here, which is great, but also I found this little tiny quill, so it tells me that she's lost a quill.  Now, it's pretty normal for aging hedgehogs to lose their quills and it's actually normal for any hedgehog to shed their quills and grow a new one, but if they're losing too many at a time, it can be concerning.  Prickle has lost probably about one quill a day in the last two weeks, and that's not super concerning, but if she was losing multiple ones each day, I'd be concerned for mites or some other skin disease or that we're coming close to the end.  

Another reason that I really like this enclosure is that Prickle is a really active hedgehog and it's not very apparent right now--she's sleeping, she is nocturnal, but at night, she gets up and she runs around and just has so much fun with all of her stuff, and because of that, it gets to be pretty messy in here.  She uses every inch of it so it's dirty right now.  I'm gonna go ahead and clean it and then we're gonna put some new fun toys in for her.  Alright.  

You might notice this thing over in the corner.  This is a heat pad and it's there in case she wants to warm herself up a little bit.  Hedgehogs are pretty sensitive about cold temperatures and I want to make sure that she doesn't get too chilly in here.  It's between 72 and 75 in this room, but this gets up to about 85 in case she wants to get warmer.   This goes right there.  You'll notice that I put some of the same stuff back in here and that's because it has her scent on it so she'll know this is her home and she won't be disturbed too much.

Now, there is a downside to having fleece on the bottom here, and if I pull Prickle out here, hey girlie, you'll see that she has some poo on her feet and that's because she poops and then she runs around and since there's no substrate to really block it or absorb it or hide it, she just steps in it, so I'm going to give her a bath, a little shallow one just to get her feet wet so that we can get them nice and clean.  

So I filled this tub with warm water and put a little towel at the bottom so that she doesn't slip.  She's going to feel more comfortable this way.  I just want to soak her feet to lose some of that poo because hedgehog poo is like cement when it dries.  It's really hard.  Alright, now it's loosened up a little bit so I'm going to try and massage it off and she doesn't like this very much, so this is something that I rarely had to do when she was housed on (?~4:05) because the poo would just get coated with the (?~4:10) and then she wouldn't step on it.  

Don't you want some dry fleece?  All dried off and while I have you here, I'm going to trim some of those long toenails, huh?  Really good girl.  You guys can hear her warning sounds.  She's hissing at me saying this is not my favorite thing to do.  Again, it's really important to trim their nails.  If you don't trim them, they will get too long and they can end up curling all the way around and going into their pads of their feet, so we've gotta make sure they get trimmed down.  Alright.  Make sure she's nice and dry.  Get that belly, get that belly dry.  

You wanna check out your home?  There's new toys in there.  I know you're still sleepy but you can go check it out.  What do you think about that grass mat?  That feels and smells weird, huh?  You can go find some place to hide.  This is new, too.  Is that cozy?  But she, you see, she is on this heat pad.  It's underneath there so she's still a little damp and you always have to be careful about putting hedgehogs away if they're wet because they can get cold really easy so I'm really happy to see that she's gone on to the heat pad and hopefully she will stay in there and dry, while she dries off and then tonight, she will play around with all of her new toys that she has and I'm going to come and peek at her and see what she's doing to everything, and the last thing I want to do is give her some new substrate to play in, so I'm just going to go ahead and put that right there and she can, I don't know, she can do whatever she wants with it.

So that's Prickles' new enclosure I wanted to show you.  It's always good to try new things and change things up and see what works best for the animal and you.  Thanks for going on this adventure with Prickle and me.  If you would like to go on an adventure with me every week, subscribe to our YouTube channel, AnimalWondersMontana.  Thanks guys.  

(Outro/Credits)