Sore hock?

I was trimming hectors bum cause it always gets matted when he's moulting, and when i checked his feet over and noticed a little sore patch on one of his feet, you can only see it when you part the fur (his other foot is fine) and he doesn't seem to be limping or avoiding putting weight on it at all, should i take him to the vets?



Also his paws are a little discoloured, which i can only assume is from where i forgot to clean his tray out and subsequently he went 2 days longer on it than he should, can anyone recommend a good shampoo or wipes that i could use to clean them? Preferably something i can pick up from pets at home or jollyes, they're not terrible as you can see from the pic, but i don't like the idea of leaving them grubby! Could i use the conficlean wipes to clean them?

i would leave the staining he will clean it himself, to me it would be a needless bath for something that wont hurt him.

does look a little bald, but from the picture you cant see very well if its sore.

Any better? Ignore the purple mark, that's from my iphone!

All rabbits have a little bare patch on the elbow of their hock. If you think that this one is larger than the other foot then it is something to keep an eye on.

As you are probably aware Flo has a similar problem, but being half rex she is prone to such problems because her fur does not adequately protect and cushion her feet from all surfaces and irritants. The skin never broke, than goodness, but it has still been a bit of a headache trying to get it fixed. I have tried a lot of different treatment options and I will tell you my musings on these.

In Flo's case the best cause my vet and I have been able to come up with is a mix of things. We think she had a fall and had a muscle injury to her back which meant she was not mobilizing enough for a while. I had woven jute mats in their room at the time which would have been fairly abrasive. I wasn't using litter in their tray at the time, just hay and newspaper, and I think there was a bit of urine scalding too.

So have a think about environment and see if you can think of anything that could be causing the problem. If you can eliminate them then the problem may go away on it's own.

If the bare patch gets bigger, the skin starts to look angry or inflamed, or you see a little big of dead skin starting to form on the joint then I'd get down to the vets and have a conversation with them. In these circumstances I would recommend getting some metacam to reduce inflammation and ease any associated pain so that Hector keep moving. Metacam is the one thing that has consistently helped Flo's feet to improve. They are not 100% yet but they are as good as they have ever been since this situation started a couple of years ago.

I would resist the urge to bandage in anyway unless the skin breaks. We did bandage Flo's feet for a while and the vet wrap dug into her skin above the joint and caused further sores. She now has a little white patch just above the joint on one foot where she has scar tissue underneath from the vetwrap. If you do get to the point where some sort of protective cover is required I would recommend using the thick terry type baby socks held on with micropore tape. This pic is not of a terry type sock, but you can see how they fit in it.



You put the sock right up the leg, wrap the micropore over the sock just above the joint then fold the sock down over the top. You will rarely get to wash the sock though as they will all end up holey.

I would also resist the urge to apply new skin treatments, which some internet sites talk about. There is really no veterinary evidence for using this. Also I would resist the idea of using sudocream for two reasons. Firstly the occasions where I tried it the skin looked more angry afterwards and secondly sudocream is not designed to be used on weight bearing areas. So it reduces skin on skin friction and damage from urine scald but it also makes the skin softer and therefore is more likely to break down when the bun hops over coarse surfaces.

Also I think I saw a bit about sore hocks on the pic ros posted on fb of the upcoming rabbiting on.

I was hoping you'd reply Cheryl! He's on soft mats and lino, he's peed outside of his tray a couple of times over the last month, and I think he's trod in it (I thought the discolouration was from his tray, but I noticed he'd peed over the edge of his tray accidentally, then trod it around). My main problem is that I have no idea what his hocks looked like before!!

I took some (hopefully) better pictures, they both look sore but it's the foot in the first picture that's troubling me most, it looks a little crusty and yellow around the edge.





I'm half tempted to see if I can get him in the vets for after work tomorrow, because I'm away from friday-monday and I'd rather not leave him that long

That does look sore, poor little man, Please let us know what the vet says.

Hugs
JO xx

This happens to Daisy every now and then, the first thing to do is make sure that his claws are not too long because they could be making his feet sit In a funny position if they are too long.

What I do with Daisy is I cover his rug with a really soft fleece blankey.... a super soft sofa throw (the sort that's so soft you want to nuzzle into it). We got ours from Tesco for about a tenner. This really seemed to help him.

I think keep an eye on it and if it gets any worse nip him to the vet, but in the meantime try trimming the nails and a soft blankey.

Hi Zo,
Vernon had the same when I got him. I only changed his litter content using news paper and a very soft straw from supreme that I ordered from the hay expert. Continued for a a month or so and it all disappeared and they are now dry and clean. I change the litter trays every day.

How is he today love?

Hugs
JO xx