Head tilt?

Question

so my rat has a head tilt. she had a stroke and working well with it. i just wanna make it easy for her to get around the cabinet( its her cage and the doors are screen doors). its b/a

Answer 1

I had a similiar problem with one of my females, but it was from inner ear infections, not a stroke. How old is your rat? My rat was very young, so for the first few months she had a very strong tilt. As she grew older, it went away for the most part, but then as she became a senior rat, it came back.

She didn't really seem to have that big of a problem getting around. It would take her a little longer to do some things, and some things she couldn't do very well, but rats are very adaptable. Whenever we offered my rat a treat, it would take a few second for her to be able to find it and grab it because her head would have a slight shake, but she would get it. Also, she would sometimes try to stand up on her back legs, and because of her tilt, she would sometimes fall over on to her side, but she never seemed hurt.

Depending on how severe the tilt is, I would try to avoid too many ramps. Say, if you have three levels with three smaller, higher angled ramps, I would convert it in to two levels with only one wider, less steep ramp. Besides that, though, our female never really had any problems getting around.

Answer 2

Check this site out. It may be torticollis. My friend's rat has it. It is not bad, it's just very annoying. But take it to the vet because it is also possibly an inner ear infection, which affects balance.

^Wiggles^

Answer 3

Normally when a rats head is tilted, it means they have an ear infection and should get medicine to treat it. Its probably just an effect of the stroke, but i would still check her ears. Anyway, to make it easier try to avoid to many steep things to climb. If the cage is multileveled, make sure the ramps aren't too steep and keep all her food and water on one level so your rat doesn't have to climb if she doesn't want to.