My breeding hen Rarity man aged to escape her breeding cage while changing food. She landed on our rat cage. The rat bit her let and clamped down. It took both me and my husband to get them apart. The vets were closed. She bled a lot but did not act phased at all. She is not tame but after that she clung to me for a bit. When the bleeding stopped we saw a wound on her leg above her toes.

 

She walks fine and flies fine and is back to being hand shy. Is there a chance for deeper damage if the leg shows no sign of redness or swelling today? My husband is calling a vet but I was wanting some advice from experienced people too. The vet we found does birds but he is mostly a cat and dog vet!

 

Should we hold off breeding and put the pair back in the bigger cage with our other budgie?

 

Advice?

 

Thanks!

I know your rat is a pet and so it's pretty clean but it's still a massive risk to your bird. Your hens going to be stressed as a result and breeding/feeding is only going to exacerbate the situation. I'd get her to the vet and hold off breeding for a bit.

As a precaution I would catch her and treat the wound with betadine /iodine eg as a rat bite, pet or not could cause a bad infection so see if you can avoid this by treating her first. As a handy hint, pepper is a good thing to help stop bleeding, if you need it in the future.

We treated her leg. All seems to be okay for now. We are holding off breeding until the wound is healed and to give them all time to calm down from the scare and all the moving around. We moved the pair back into the bigger cage with our other budgie Max.

Hope it all turns out alright. Look forward to hearing about the breeding when you pair them back up.