Swollen Leg
Posted by jorats on Tuesday Jul 14, 2009 Under HealthRats are very agile and fast but once in a while they move a certain way when they shouldn’t and they end up hurting their legs. A sprained leg is very common and not much of a concern although you must keep an eye on it in case an infection develops.
A typical sprained leg or bruised leg will swell up really big. But within 3 days the swelling should go down and the rat be back to his normal self.
Keeping the rat quiet and immobile will speed up his recovery. Some people will remove their rat from the colony cage to put in a hospital cage, this is ok to do so long as it does not create any new stress to the rat. Stress can completely halt recovery, in fact, it can make things a lot worse. So if you think rattie is happier in his current cage, then leave him be.
If you can sense that he’s in a lot of pain: stops eating, zones out, sleeps all the time, then it would be wise to get him a prescription of metacam from your vet.
Things to watch for, excessive swelling that doesn’t go down in a week, severe discoloration and lethargy. This could be an infection such as cellulitis which requires a vet check.
August 27th, 2009 at 10:58 PM
one of my old does mazie got bumble foot one time while my babies were growing up so when they were let out to play mazie would bring the little 2 week old pups into a corner and sleep for like hours. the little pups would sleep ontop of her under her next to her. it was the same corner everyday. i did notice that she was limping a little but i thought it was a pulled muscle but then it get really swollen and it hurt for me to touch it and one time she bit the vet for touching it ( i told the vet that it hurt her and i told her not to touch it, but she did and she got bit and bled for a little bit :] thats what she gets for not listening to the owner or aka mama) so she was put on meds and the swelling went down almost immidiatly i was thrilled with the results and so was she!!