[tabitha]

Hello, I'm Tabitha, and I'm new here...I have two babies, Sophie (a Cream self) and Tallula (a Brown self). 3 weeks ago, my friend bought a pet rat as well, and tonight, (after hers was quarrenteened for 3 weeks), we tried to intruduse her rat with my Sophie. Well, things seemed to be going alright, and then all of a sudden her rat reared up, and attacked mine, so viscouslly that she drew blood!

Sophies bleeding from her right by her ear, and a little below that...Ive got a tissue on it, and i think ive stopped the bleeding, but what else do I need to do to help her? I have no idea what to do...

Will she be alright? Should i get something antiboitoc so it doesnt get infected? Or will that be to powerful, and kill her?

 

[Lexarius]

Maybe get a q-tip with some hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol to clean the wound.

I hear flour is pretty good at stopping the bleeding. Just rub it into the wound.

 

[Roddanagh]

You might want to invest in styptic powder in case this happens again.

As for rubbing alcohol -- I've seen several warnings against that. It dries out and kills their skin to a greater extent than it does ours.

 

[tncekm]

You might want to invest in styptic powder in case this happens again.

As for rubbing alcohol -- I've seen several warnings against that. It dries out and kills their skin to a greater extent than it does ours.

Not to mention it seems to make wounds bleed more, and its a very poor antimicrobial agent. In all honesty, when you go to a doctors office and they use rubbing alcohol to prepare skin for an injection or something similar, its simply to "clean" the are, that's why the nurses wipe hard. Hydrogen peroxide would probably be used more often if it weren't for its tendency to quickly turn into water (hydrogen peroxide = H2O2 water = H2O).

Hydrogen peroxide is a great choice for treating wounds because it is very effective, but I'm not sure if it would have any unwanted effects on the skin--I'm no rat expert

I've always had good luck with using small amounts of neosporin on rat wounds. Dont use too much though, it seems that rats love the taste of it for some reason. And, I'm pretty sure its not toxic to rats to any degree, but I'd still consider it wise to eliminate the possibility for consuming large quantities of it (I found a couple of my rats digging into a neosporin tube like it was candy and they all showed no signs of illness).

Oh, and the stypic powder is a great idea--I've also seen people use cornstarch, baking soda, and flour in place of stypic powder when its not available.

Best of luck!