Nail Disaster!

I went online to see how to trim my birds nails, I thought it was time to do so. I only took the very tip of the nail off and blood everywhere. I felt so bad! I held it until it stopped bleeding, but it was a mess. :-(

So what did I do wrong? I used a nail trimmer, and I didn't think I cut the blood supply! I heard that a birds blood supply nerve can over grow if you don't trim it back? Is that true?

I tried to trim another nail, and I felt like I was hurting him. I got one more, and no blood. After the first and 2nd one I stopped.

That is horrible, I am so sorry. I would have just bawled if I made my baby bleed. I just take him to they pet store I bought him from to get it done.

My Pet store stopped doing it because one of their employee's from another store took a toe off. :-/

So the small few that knew what they were doing can't do it anymore.

If your bird has light colored nails, you can hold a flashlight under their nails & see the point where the blood line stops.....

Awww! I am so sorry! That is one of my biggest fears. Honestly, I am new to nail clipping but I have been slowly chipping away at my caiques nails. I am so chicken to take much off at a time but so far so good.

Lately, I have been learning a bit about how to train birds to allow you to trim their nails. I am sure having them do it voluntarily is less stressful for them and it is DEFINITELY less stressful for ME

If you check out Barbara Heidenreich's site and subscribe to her newsletter she will send you three videos on how to train cooperative nail trimming.

With my caiques, I have spent about a week just desensitizing them to the clippers by holding them in my hand when I was doing other training or just offering treats. Then I started playing with their toes and feet while holding the clippers. Finally, I could sneak in a clip here or there. All paired with treats of course.

I found that for starters I could just leave them in the cage and offer treats from the outside while they hung on the bars on the inside. As I distracted them with one hand full of treats I handled the clippers with the other hand.

Four caiques in a cage are a bit of a circus and it is an exercise in patience but I've been having some success. I am sure you can do it too!

As for trained caiques...well I have four birds who come "running" when they see the nail clippers I guess you can say they are trained

With some birds there's no distractions that would take away from the nail clipper. You can train them to give you their toes so you can clip their nails. The only one that I was able to freely clip nails without hassle was Java the U2 surprisingly out of all birds. I've always taken my macaws to have theirs done but when I'm just tired of searching for vets after vets, I started doing the macaws on my own. The reason I wouldn't do it before was because no one was willing to hold them for me. But now I develop a way to hold them on my own so I was able to clip without issues. Whenever you clip, it is always wise to have a blood stopper with you, if you don't have any, get some flour or corn starch, most people should have those in their kitchen. Those will help to stop the bleeding if need to. I've done it long enough but every so often I do accidentally clip one to bleed. I do try my best to avoid that and it makes me tremble to see them bleed, I don't like the sight of blood....I do all my bird's nails on my own now days.

Is a Macaw really hard? I am going to own one some day and I am learning all I can before I do.

I have never trimmed my birds nails in 5 years, to afraid to do it. Instead I make sure that her main perch is a sand perch. It's also a good idea to have more then one.

Oh and get styptic powder, even if your not going to trim her nails again it's a must have in the house for birds.

I do know how you feel though, my friends dog has black nails and I've tried trimming them twice. Both times he bled like crazy and the second time I was really worried. He is very uncooperative and his nails are really long. I'm not doing it again, the vet or a groomer will do it from now on.

Another consideration is the beak, I switched back to seed for a while because I didn't have time to make it to the vet before they closed and her beak started to overgrow. I got her every beak filing thing I could find and she never used them, it was switching back to pelleted food that did the trick. (pellets are far better anyways) Another quick comment on seed food is something the vet told me when I brought her in. Seed food is high energy, way to much for a caged bird. She started pulling her feathers out and digging at her skin. Ointment and switching back to the pellet food did the trick. I use harrisons super fine.

I have never had Lukah's nails trimmed by anyone by me and kind of just... decided to do it! Anyway, besides one major mishap early on, I haven't had any troubles and so consider myself pretty good at it. But don't feel bad. It is hard work- all it takes is one move of their foot or one slightly misplaced clip and theyre bleeding like crazy!

Here's how I do it and hopefully it will help you!!

First of all, what kind of clipper do you have? I went to the petstore and they advertised one like this as a "bird nail clipper" http://www.wag.com/dog/p/jw-pet-gripsoft-nail-trimmer-106187?site=CA&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc_W&utm_term=JWP-016&utm_campaign=GooglePLA&CAWELAID=1323887506&utm_content=pla&ca_sku=JWP-016&ca_gpa=pla&ca_kw={keyword} I, personally would never even attempt to trim LUkah's nails with one of these. The visibility is bad and its too easy to make a mistake. I got one like this that was labeled as "for dogs" and much cheaper https://www.google.com/shopping/pro...ei=Dj1XUqXQJ6jSyAGP6oCIDg&ved=0CKEBEPMCMAU4Cg It gives you WAY more control and visibility as to exactly where you're cutting and exactly when you're cutting it.

Second, I'm not a firm believer in the whole "hold them in a towel upside down and grab their foot" method. Lukah hates when I grab him and, if done right, nail clipping really shouldn't be something for him to fear, so grabbing the bird, putting it out of its comfort zone and then coming at it with an object its not used to and possibly cutting too deep are all things I think would make the experience way more dramatic than it needs to be.

I also have baking powder on hand (a separate one that I only use for Lukah) in case I do cut too deep because it helps to stop the bleeding. I know that styptic powder works as well but I've heard its bad for them to digest and that it can burn. However, if I were you I would have both on hand so that if it's too much blood to stop with baking powder and pressure, you can use the styptic powder. But again, I wouldn't use it for just a small cut- more unneeded pain/fear.

All that being said, here's my method-

I have Lukah step on to my index finger. I use my thumb of the same hand to press down on the toe I am going to cut and hold it in place. You want to make sure that you are holding it in the right spot that he/she can't move the nail or toe around and that you have it tightly enough otherwise they could move while you're cutting and result in the need for that styptic powder! After I have his toe secure, I clip off a TINY TINY bit of the end of the nail. Sometimes it seems like you're barely clipping anything off. But basically if his nails are overgrown, so is the quick. So if you cut it according to where pictures say to cut, it will sometimes bleed because your birds quick might not be in the same place as the pictures. Snip snip and you're done with one nail. Take a breath, give your bird a treat and then wait a little while. When your bird is over the "super dramatic trimming of his nail" (lukah always lets out a screech like he's been mortally wounded even though he isn't hurt at all) go ahead and do another one.

Okay so sounds simple but here's the thing... your bird is not going to like having their foot held in place... I'm lucky and lukah rarely bites me hard unless he is really afraid or trapped so he usually just flaps like crazy while I keep one foot on my finger. However, the trick is to get fast at it so that they don't have much time to freak out. This requires practice. Try just holding the toe for a seconds every now and then a few times a day without doing and cuts. Once your bird is more used to it, then you can move on to cutting. Lukah is now very used to having his feet handled, but even he still doesnt like when I hold his toe in place.

Option two:
If your bird likes standing on flat surfaces (lukah hates it. he's all about fingers and perches) then this is probably a good way to do it! (This is how I do Lukah's back nails. DO NOT use the way I said above for the back nails- I tried it once and it ended in disaster and blood) [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsrkKMTHyz4]Trimming Jessie's Nails - YouTube[/ame]

Also, if your bird's nails are overgrown, then you should wait about 4 days in-between trimmings to be safe so that the quick has time to recede!