buck with sebeceous cyst

Question
Hi Sandra,

My male buck is one and a half. For four months he has had a lump growing slowly on his back. I have taken him to a vet who said it was a tumour or abcess (but didn't seem too interested to be honest) and told me to keep an eye on it. Now it is about the size of a thumbnail and I am convinced it is a sebeceous cyst (it moves freely with the skin and has a deep dark pore on the surface). I have tried hot compresses but it seems too big to squeeze.

It doesn't bother him at all and I don't know whether I should get the vet to lance it (causing him pain and stress) or leave it and hope it grows slowly enough to not bother him until the end.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you

Answer
Can you take a photo of it and attach it here? Epidermoid cysts)  develop beneath the skin and are Slow-growing

While these cysts are not unheard of, they are not too common, either.

A mass that can move freely under the skin is better than one that is attached since those are often cancerous, but this still may be a tumor and not a cyst.

The vet doesnt have to do much to it but stick a little needle in the cyst and aspirate the contents. Not a huge deal at all, but of course the rat may disagree. It would be expensive to have it sent to a lab for a biopsy. I do not know how far you want to go with it and if it is more than just a cyst, will you want to risk surgery?  I had my own rat years ago with a mass that kept growing slowly that also had a black little crater in the center of it.  It grew to the size of an egg. This rat died after a year and the mass was still there. He died from something totally unrelated to the mass, which after his death I had a necropsy done and the tumor turned out to be a nasty form of cancer but it was encapsulated and wasnt spreading into his organs. It remained subcutaneous all that time. He was a rescued lab rat that lived to be three years old.  Had we removed that mass chances are some of the cancer would have remained, would no longer be encapsulated and probably would have traveled to his organs and killed him sooner than heart disease did.  Should you decide to remove this I would not do it without first having it biopsied so you dont risk the chance of spreading it.  If it continues to grow slow and doesnt bother him, leave it be.  These things often cause us more concern than it does the rat itself!!  LOL!