[higginsmischief]

Hello! So i have a mischief of 5 brothers who are about 1 y/o right now. One of my loves somehow injured his back foot (or leg I'm not sure). It is swollen and he babies it often. He normally will keep it tucked and will either drag it along or hop on it. He does - however - hobble on it sometimes when he has free roam time (which is now limited to 30 min until he's healed). I already called the vet and she told me to monitor the swelling for a week and if it isn't getting better to bring him in.
Here's my question - how long should swelling take to go away? or at least go down? This is day four and I've taken picture each day to monitor progress but to doesn't seem to be going back to normal yet. His behavior is the same - he eats, drinks, plays, pings around the room chasing his rabbit brother - but it's obvious he is not using that one back leg.
I also considered bumblefoot, but one, he is on Baytril for a URI so that should have cleared up infection by now, and everything he ever walks on (I kid you not) is soft or smooth. He only encounters wires while climbing up the side of his cage.
I'm assuming, since he thinks hes a daredevil, that he must've landed on it wrong at some point, but luckily he displays no signs of pain when i knead or stretch his foot (carefully). He's more angry that he's being manhandled lol. I can include a picture if that would be helpful but I was just wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem and, if so, how long it took for the swelling to reduce.
Thank you!

 

[Shadow <3]

I've seen my fair share of sprains with my rats so I can chip in here. First I would stop all free-range, since rats as prey animals will try to act normal even when in immense pain and so he will try to run around during free-range (especially because this time excites them) and so he is likely only making it worse. I stop all free-range for my rats that get injured until they have healed, and while it sucks it really does speed the healing process. You may even need to move him and a gentle friend to a one level cage (with visiting time with the others on a daily basis to prevent them from forgetting each other), however I haven't had to do that for most of my rats since I find that inside their usual cage they do a good job of not going past their injuries limits.

I would also recommend getting some infant or children's mortrin - infant is twice as concentrated and so he'd need less of it, so I would try to find the infant version. Go for wildberry flavor since it seems to be a rat favorite and most rats will eat it straight up without having to hide it in another treat. Also get some 1 ml syringes if you don't have any, since these allow you to accuratley dose animals that are as small as rats. Finally weigh him on a kitchen scale in grams and then you can dose him using these charts (scroll down to find the mortrin charts): Rat Medicine Dosage Charts

I usually do mortrin twice a day for the first 1-3 days after a sprain to reduce any swelling and pain, then I go to one dose a day for a day or two and then no doses. You can technically dose it every 6 hours and I have done so for worse injuries that caused more pain to the rats, but for a sprain its not necessary.

Finally I would just try to keep him calm and limit his activity (so again no free-range and nothing that excites him) - you should see swelling go way down just hours after the first mortrin dose, and as for the injury healing typically they only take a few days once swelling is gone however I've seen it take as long as 2 weeks for an old rat (my poor 👦 Mallow was super prone to sprains once hind leg degeneration set in - he had the worst sprain I've seen in rats, super swollen, oozing, red and painful - after the first dose of mortrin it went back to normal within about 2 hours, then after that it was just a slow trek to it fully healing. All my other rats have healed up in 1-5 days depending on how bad the sprain was, so I think Mallows age and the severity of the sprain were big factors in his slow healing).

Anyways as for how he sprained himself it can be from landing wrong, or twisting their feet in the bars, or catching their feet on toys, and really just about anything can be a risk. Having lots of fall breakers and ramps for old rats helps, but otherwise some rats are more injury prone and so you just have to deal with issues as they come up. Thankfully sprains are pretty easy to treat and I just recommend keeping a kitchen scale, 1 ml syringes, and infant mortrin in your rat first aid kit to deal with them when they pop up.