clipping claws

[gizmo101]

i dont know how far to clip my cockatiels claws
they are getting unbearable when he sits on my hand i get big scratches on my hand


so how far do i clip his claws

[gizmo101]

i have a cement swing in his cage but even though he goes on it because its his favorite swing but it doesnt help alot and like i mentioned besides eating and playing he is on his swing alot

[pchela]

Just the very tip. It does not take much at all to start bleeding. Have some quickstop or cornstarch or flour on hand just in case so that you can blot it if it does start bleeding. But yeah, just clip or file the very tip of the nail.

[zazanomore]

If you don't feel comfortable doing it, then take him to a petstore or vet's office to get it done. Better safe than sorry.

[MandyG]

You can also try to file his nails. I'm not very comfortable clipping black nails on any animal so I file them instead. Just file the tip enough to make it blunt without removing very much length. Be careful because it's still very easy to file too much and cause the bird to bleed.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

It's not good to clip too close and cause bleeding, but when I first started to be interested in birds I had the false impression that one slightly close clip and the bird would bleed out.

I was terrified the first few times I helped Bill with his mother's Amazon Sake (the last bird that decided it liked the women in its life better, poor guy, he raised Sake from an egg but had to leave the country for two years for a postdoc and wen he came back the bird had decided, but I digress.) One time he did get a bit short, and calmly packed it with styptic powder and low and behold, the bird was no worse for wear.

So while one should be careful and I will always be super conservative -- a minor mistake is unlikely to be the end of the world. Just make sure you know where your styptic powder is.

[Java]

I cannot find a way to clip Java's claws either. I have done it once by holding him in a blanket and doing 1 at a time. This was when I cut too far and didn't see the blood until I was finished and I swore he was going to die from bleeding so much. I held him with pressure on the claw with a rag, and it took forever (literally about an hour for the 2 claws that I cut too short to stop bleeding, and I was able to get my DNA sample by accident, but I swore I won’t do that again. I cannot go to the pet shop really, they are quite a bit away from me, and I do not go that often. So, have been trying to file them with a nail file. Java freaks. I can touch his claws all I want but put that file in my hand and he becomes a monster. I also found when I did clip his claws, he could not hold on as well as he does when I do not clip them. For instance, he is on my shoulder all the time, I bend down, he hangs on. I go to the bathroom, he comes with me and hangs on. I go do the laundry, bending into the washer to put cloths in the dryer, and he hangs on. When his claws are clipped, he falls off. I do have a cement perch, does nothing, and tried to put an extra perch in his cage with sandpaper, does nothing. So, anyway, for me now, I am choosing not to worry about it. If I see they are getting so long they bother him or medically they cause any issues, I will have to find another way to do this.

And, I always think, how do they handle this in the wild? I know they don’t go to pet shops to have their claws clipped, so something in their environment does the trick or they have long claws.

The long claws do rip my shoulders apart though, but I just deal with it. I have scratches all up my arms and my shoulders, but I don’t mind them. Sometimes, I find if he is sitting on a certain spot on my shoulder it hurts more, so I just adjust him by pulling my shirt up a bit and it won’t hurt for a little while.

[issy]

I have this same problem with sheldon, his nails were not sharp before because his perches blunted them. Now when I got them clipped at the vet they grew back sharp and the perch does not work anymore. I think i'm groing to try to file them down a little next time.