Nail file

[cstone01]

In the past we have had our vet always clip nails, a few weeks ago I discovered Hephaestion will allow me to file his nails with one of my nail files ( he tolerates 3 or 4 nails then flys away but I can get them all in a day). Is this bad for his little toes? I hold his toe and go in one direction like you should with human nails. He has very scratchy feet but I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t cast him in a towel, he just sits on my hand right now. He doesn’t like getting in his travel cage to go to the vet, it’s always a little bit of a battle.

[Pajarita]

No, it's not only not bad for his toes, it's great that you found a way to eliminate that extra source of stress! Have you tried using a size-adequate sweetfeet perch for his roosting? Because those perches have been the greatest help to me to the point that I only have to cut the nails of two birds: Javi Caique's because his claws grow in a circle and, if they are the tiniest bit long, he gets them 'caught' in the cage bars and has to pull and pull to get them out (which puts him in a real bad mood) - and Naida Zon's single nail that, because of what I assume is some sort of deformation (she came that way to me), grows straight out so it never gets 'filed down' by the perch.

These perches are, in my personal opinion, pretty much perfect! They are made of plastic (easy to wash), they are not only uneven in their diameter but also go up and down in kind of like a wave (great exercise for toes, feet and legs) and they have two rough sides (for the nails) and two soft sides (for the soles). If you get the right size (the feet need to go 3/4 around the diameter so the end of the claws of the front toes and the end of the claws of the back toes are only separated by a 1/4 of the diameter of the perch), they work like magic!