hairless rat...

Question
My hairless rat is approx. 1 year old.  He has been healthy, but i notice that his eye will sometimes get cloudy and look all red around the edges.  It will go away and then come back about every month or so.  One time he even scratched it so bad that he was bleeding a little. But once I decided to take him to the vet it gets better. I take good care of him, making sure his cage is always clean and changing his bedding/ nesting materials weekly.  What should I do to keep this from happening?

Answer
What type of bedding are you using now? Sometimes the bedding/litter is the culprit and can cause irritation that only lasts a few days which may explain why he gets better before the vet can see.
You can always snap a photo of him. I do that. I have a rat with one eye. A nasty infection destroyed his other eye and we had to remove it, and his eye socket would swell and get all puffy but soon as I went to bring him in, it would go away, so I snapped a close up, putting my camera on the MACRO setting, and I was able to hurry and snap a picture of Santana and email the vet.

Does he live alone?

What is in the cage that can poke him at all as far as fuzzy objects, or hay...(some folks give their rat timothy hay which I  do not suggest)

Hairless rats are super prone to eye problems since they have no eyelashes to keep debris from getting in the eyes.

The way to prevent it is to take a hard look around and see what he comes in contact with that could be doing this.

Again, what kind of litter is he on and this may sound strange but what kind of diet is he on? That may also cause allergies and it can indeed cause eyes to be irritated too.

Please let me know in a follow up.

Thanks for caring  about your rats well being!

Sandy