Baby Rat Dragging Rear Legs

I found a 2 1/2 week old rat baby dragging it's rear legs. It is one of twelve in the litter and all of the others are fine. I found articles about older rats having this rear leg problem but not babies. It appears to be an injury.

Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by JohnNJ

I found a 2 1/2 week old rat baby dragging it's rear legs. It is one of twelve in the litter and all of the others are fine. I found articles about older rats having this rear leg problem but not babies. It appears to be an injury.

Thoughts?

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i had a female rat that was fine and had a few litters of babbies and one day she was just like that draging her legs.never seen that in my whole time of breeding all i can come up with is that the spine was broken due to weak bones from nursing.in a baby that could be a broken or deformed spine that can be the problem.it happens in humans and diffrent animals i seen weelie the dog like that. paraplegic animals are out there and it happens so maybe the little guy is one of them.he just the special one in the litter.maybe something happen at birth mom could of step,jump on him wrong.

It's possibly a urinary tract infection. Rats drag their hind legs when they have them.

But if not, it might be something more complicated like spinal damage, or even brain damage.

I hate to say it but if it were me I'd either feed it off or just euthanize it. Sucks to do it but sometimes you have to.

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Originally Posted by azmodane

I hate to say it but if it were me I'd either feed it off or just euthanize it. Sucks to do it but sometimes you have to.

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Ditto