nail care.

Does anyone have any ideas, or how to go about trimming bird nails without causing the bird anxiety and stress? The closest avian vet is nearly an hour away, and with 14 birds (work at a resort who's budget always seems to be tight one way or another), it'd be a little bit less stress financial wise if we'd be able to trim the nails as needed ourselves. But my question is, if we trim the nails, will the birds associate us with the stress and anxiety with it?

You need to be confident with toweling your birds safely and securely, and should have special avian toenail clippers (different than ones for human nails!) and styptic powder on hand (if you clip too short, you'll want to stop the bleeding). We find nail clipping to be a 2 person job (husband restrains, I clip). It's not that hard, though is kind of unnerving the first few times because you're restraining your beloved friend and clearly forcing something on them they don't want done. It can also require some delicate maneuvering when they ball up their foot and you have to ever so gently pry one toe out at a time to trim. If you reward afterwards immediately with a treat and then a favored activity, like a bath, eventually your bird will kind of just sit there and tolerate it.

We *personally* found our amazon was much LESS stressed the first time we tried to groom him at home (we do nails and wings) than he was at the bird store we used to take him to for grooming. The man who used to do it was very gentle and very competent, but Kiwi panicked about a stranger restraining him far more than he did when we restrained him. He gives us the stink eye and wiggles a little, but when someone he doesn't know tries it, he literally fights for his life and it scared me he would have a heart attack! Now that we've been doing it for a few years, it takes us under 5 minutes to restrain, clip nails, run a file over each nail and clip his wings (that he doesn't even need to be restrained for, he's learned to sit there and let you extend his wings). It's SO much better for everyone, and while not his favorite thing to happen on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, he knows we aren't looking to harm him and that the only reason we would ever restrain him like that is for grooming (knows whats coming and that it doesn't hurt).

Here's an explanation of proper nail trimming for parrots:

If any of your birds are extremely tame and trusting, perhaps you can integrate nail clipping with a cuddle-session. You'll immediately know if this is possible, but don't push it as you don't want to taint the relationship. I can do this with one of my Goffins and an Eclectus. No towel, just a warmup of cuddling and then then the nail clipper appears! On occasion they are not in the mood, so the clipping is tabled for another time.