Hurt Rat, please help!

So this may be a somewhat wordy post.
I recently got home from my girlfriends house, I stayed over for the weekend. I’d asked my brother to look after my two sweet boys. My mom decided to also “help”. I’m putting that in quotation marks because of what happened.

She decided to feed them last night, and didn’t close their cage properly. It sits on top of my dresser (and i really want to expand soon), and it’s quite a drop down.

When I got home and went up to my room, I noticed that my bedroom door was open, and saw one of my boys, Merry, dart across my floor. I couldn’t find Pippin, so I got them both to come out of hiding with their favorite treats.

When Pips came up to me I noticed that his right eye was closed and he had tears around his eyelid. When he opened it I saw that he has a scratch on his eyeball. A big one. I can’t get him in to the vet today, but I’ll be able to tomorrow. Is there anything I can do in the meantime to help my poor boy? Should I quarantine him from his brother or anything?

TLDR; Rat has a large scratch on his eyeball, can’t get him in to the vet tonight, please help!

If the scratch is causing him pain you can give some children’s ibuprofen. It will help with swelling as well. Just get a weight and we can help with dosing.

I agree, all you can really do until you get him to a vet is some pain meds to keep him comfortable.
I wouldn’t separate him from his buddy. It sounds like an injury and nothing contagious. Separating may just stress him out more!
Good luck! Hope your little guy is feeling better soon!

Pain medication and watch the eye for any discoloration, change in shape or size. If it's just a scratch it will heal in time. If the eyeball was punctured it will deflate slowly as the vitreous fluid leaks out. Antibiotics and drops can help prevent infection. In both cases watch for change in smell with eye (sniff over that eye daily), and any bulging could be bad. Hopefully your vet gives you Metacam (meloxicam) and oral antibiotics or drops. If the eye is punctured it may shrivel up on its own or if there's complications you may be looking at an enucleation surgery (most resolve well on their own)

I took him to the vet. His eye was punctured, but no fluid was leaking out. He is temporarily blind in his right eye now though.

He got put on Baytril and Ofloxacin, but he's being a silly boy and not holding still even though I've heard baytril tastes good to rats!

Great that he saw the vet
baytril only tastes good if they like the flavour used when it was mixed up
the baytril I give is extremely bitter so I have to add things to it
good luck

Glad you got him to the vet! Did your vet mix the baytril with anything? It is actually pretty horrible tasting I believe... my vet usually mixes it with a strawberry syrup and my rats are still not thrilled with it, lol!

well the bottle's bright pink so i think he used some sort of syrup! merry tried to clean it all off of pippins face though, the little bits that spilled

Lol that’s cute! Make sure you are shaking or stirring the mixture when your giving him the meds... hopefully he will start taking it easier for you going forward [emoji4]

update: this time he actually liked the baytril but he's still stinking mad about the eyedrops

Pippin and Merry said:

update: this time he actually liked the baytril but he's still stinking mad about the eyedrops

Click to expand...

they may hurt or perhaps are just uncomfortable