rats foot got bit

Question
one of my boys was walking on top of the cage of a friend's rat who i was watching for a few days, and the rat bit his toe throught the bars. It is now about four days later and his whole toe is red and swolen and it looks like it may have an abscess forming as well. The bite mark is on both sides of the foot so it looks like it may have been bitten nearly all the way through. We've been giving him baytril to try and help the infection.

Will the abscess drain on its own? Should we just keep an eye on it and let it heal? I've heard that you have to drain abscess' in order for them to heal.

Answer
Try to get it to drain.  What you can do is try (yeah, try..LOL) to get him  to let you hold a warm compress on the foot.

Try to give it a squeeze to get all of the pus out because it will heal once the exudate is out like you asked earlier in your message.


Once it opens up and drains. rinse it well with either saline solution or hibicleanse, which you can get at any drug store. It should start to heal on its own after that, but sometimes the rat opens it up on his own and takes care of it.

If it gets worse of course, call your vet right away.