Claw injury

yaretzi said:

I feel a bit silly posting about a silly claw injury after everything all my bunnies have been through, but this is the first time in 8 years that anyone has hurt their claw!

Winston was in the garden last weekend while I was cleaning out the shed/supervising, and I found him sat somewhere for a little while. I picked him up and put him back in the shed (he hasn't figured out he can go back in by himself so often just plops himself down!) and there were a few little blobs of blood, a couple of cm wide but it had been raining heavily for days beforehand so it would have spread a lot. There was not a drop of blood on him (he's a white bun so would've been obvious) so I assumed he'd caught a claw and was fine.

Fast forward a week and my mom when she fed them this morning said he was grooming his front paw and there was a bit of blood. I've had a look and there's a few 1mm drops of blood around. I looked at his claw and it seems to be the dew claw... it's very clean, there's only a tad of dried blood and that's deep up the toe.

The claw itself is secure on the toe but it is darker and a little purple towards the toe end. That's the only thing that I'm worried about. The thing I'm wondering about is if the claw isn't damaged, perhaps it's a broken toe? He doesn't really mind me poking it, but would rather I didn't poke it. He can fully weight bear, dig his hay out his tray and use the paw to get a better grip on his food dish.

He has severe arthritis and has only just started getting more excited/running more/binkying around the garden and he does stumble occasionally so I'm sure he's just done it doing that.

He's on metacam daily for arthritis anyway and it all looks very clean so pain is not an issue if it's just the claw.

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Jack's-Jane said:

Was it this weekend just gone that you first noticed blood, so a couple of days ago ? If so then as long as there is no sign of infection at the nail bed/tracking up the toe then it is probably 'just' bruising you can see. A broken toe is usually quite obvious in that it is very painful to touch and often sticks out at an odd angle xx

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tonibun said:

I find some of the rabbits' dew claws are at an off -angle, some are missing and some start to curl round before you cut them. I hope it doesn't cause him any problems. Yes it did seem a bit odd asking about dew claws, but no-one knows everything. :thumb:

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yaretzi said:

His toe hasn't been bothering him since I posted this, but tonight he is hesitant to put his foot down and there's a tiny streak of blood on his toe. I had a feel and his whole foot feels very wobbly but I can't imagine he's broken the entire foot :shock: I'll be taking him to the vets tomorrow to have him checked over.

I did drop his metacam down to 0.6ml from 0.8ml this morning for the first time (we are trying to find the correct dose for him to be on for his arthritis) so it could just be that...

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yaretzi said:

We're back! The vet thinks it's just a bruised claw, as the skin looks fine and not inflammed and there's no evidence that he's in any pain on his actual toes or foot either. She was going to clip off the end of the claw so that he would be less inclined to nibble at it and make it bleed but he twitched as she did it and pulled the whole claw off :lol: So with it gone he should be much more comfy soon. We have 3 days of baytril just to make sure that no infection sets in but there's no evidence of any infection anyway.

I'd like to have words with Winston as to why his paw was so floppy when it was just his claw :roll: I was somewhat convinced deep down that he'd broken his toe or paw :lol: He can hide severe arthritis in 8 of his vertebrae from the rescue and several vets but when it comes to a bruised toenail he plays the sympathy card :lol:

Couple of pics of him...

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yaretzi said:

Well guess who has managed to rip another claw off :roll:!

He knocked it while I was in the shed doing his medication, I suddenly noticed a load of blood being blobbed about all over their shelf :shock: My mom was helping me do his medication because he's become really bad at taking it, and I had a look to see it half hanging off :roll: It had basically stopped bleeding already so I managed to pull the tiny bit connecting it off, and it took another few secs before it finished bleeding.

This one was split down the middle though, presumably an older injury by the looks of it

One claw injury is clumsy but two is suspicious, and I think it might be the mesh that I had to lay under their narrow run... I wouldn't usually do it because of this risk but it was the only way Winston could get from the shed to the run so I decided to do it for now. Luckily I'd by this point already added a wide runaround dig tube which arrived this morning so I'm going to put that up tomorrow and hopefully Winston can keep his claws on :shock:

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