Well on Wednesday night my boys were all on the landing having a run around. My alpha male Adama has been getting steadily more and more alpha and aggressive to the other boys. Me and my OH talked about getting him castrated and then Adama sealed his castration for sure...
Now when I say Adama is aggressive I do not mean that he is horrible or fighting I just mean he is a little bit of a bully and not only to his younger cage mates. He bosses around and treats his brother and my old boy the same. To show his dominance he will often pin another rat down and he tried to do this with baby Boomer. Boomer would not roll over so Adama pinched him with his teeth but Boomer pulled away resulting in this horrible injury
It tore the skin. Rats are amazing and while the skin was torn there was no bleeding, the muscle underneath can be seen but was intact. Now rats heal very very well. I have seen gashes double this size heal overnight on other animals and Crashdowns lost tail was healed over in under 3 days. We cleaned the wound up with some purple spray and gave him some pain relief. However this injury is on Boomers shoulder blade and he will not slow down so over night he opened the would up more and more. By morning it was showing no signs of knitting together so I called the vet. She confirmed my thoughts that he was reopening the wound himself and it needed closing. The choices were anesthetic and stitches that he would more than likely try to rip out or if he could sit still enough staples. I have only had Boomer a short time but he is an angel so he was able to go through and have staples with no issues. He got home and ate his weight in food and then lay down for the night cuddled up to me. He is now in a hospital cage but I shall be giving him the company of one of my quiet boys for today so he is not alone.
Ohhh and Adama will be going to have his boy bits removed at the end of this week!