So, you need to trim your bird's nails. You have a few options. If your bird's nails are just slightly overgrown, you can purchase a sandy perch (concrete perch of any brand) and place it where your bird likes to perch the most. These perches will file the nails naturally as your bird moves along it. Using sandy perches exclusively will irritate the bottom of your bird's feet, so you need to swap them out for wood or rope perches regularly, to give their feet a rest. Some birds will not sit on a concrete perch, or they hold their feet in a way that prevents them from helping. You will need to file your bird's nails yourself. If your bird allows you to touch his/her feet readily, this should not be very difficult. If not, grab a towel, a brave friend, your emery board (nail file) and a bit of strenght and let's continue. The first step is letting your bird "meet" the nail file. Birds do not like new objects being forced upon them suddenly. Same goes for the offensive file. By allowing your bird to investigate, they will have much less fear and cooperate a lot easier. Here's a picture of Pogo "meeting" his nail file.
The next step is to grasp your bird's toe firmly, and gently file the nail. If your bird is giving you a hard time, towel them, make sure their beak cannot contact your hand, and then, grasp their toe, and file the nail. The most important point here is to aviod the Quick. The Quick is the live part of the nail that will Bleed Profusely if damaged by the file. If your bird has dark nails and you cannot see the live part inside (looks like blood) try shining a flashlight behind the nail, the darkest strip in the middle is the living part of the nail that you wish to avoid. Do not try to go crazy filing away. Be careful, don't stress your bird to accomplish the entire task. If your bird is very frightened by this experience, stop for the day. Try finishing a few more toes a day or two later, or even a few hours later. Give very frightened birds a chance to calm down before you continue. Here's some pictures of Pogo very graciously allowing Paul to file his nails.
The other option you have is nail trimming, with clippers of some sort. This is a bit more tricky than filing your birds nails, because of the potential to trim the nails too short and cause your bird to bleed. Birds bleed to death VERY easily, so if you're at all worried about this, please let your vet do it this time, have them show you the proper techniques first hand, then you can try the next time on your own. Nails only need to be trimmed when they are too long to allow the bird to comfortably perch. If you're clipping because the nails are too sharp, please try a perch designed to file nails, or file the nails yourself. Very few birds should need their nails trimmed. If they have the proper environment, their nails should never get that long in the first place. Birds with ample acess to rough perches and natural wood perches of varying sizes will wear their nails naturally. If you're having to clip your birds nails, please re-evaluate their environment and find the culprit behind the problem. Granted sometimes when you get a new bird they were in a bad environment to begin with, and now that they're in your loving home they're gonna need a trim to get their nails back into shape...so here we go.
Ok, so you're ready to trim your birds nails. Well, its much the same as the procedure for filing nails, only now you're going to take off a bit more nail. Again as with filing you want to find the Quick of the nail. Again the Quick is the living part of the nail that will BLEED if cut too close to. Follow the procedure outlined above, only clipping. Its not as hard as it sounds. Read the procedure for nail filing, but instead of filing off the tip, clip it off. I find dog nail clippers to be quite effective for this purpose, as long as they're not too big and they're good and sharp. Good luck! Remember to be VERY careful that your bird doesn't struggle and cause you to clip off too much! Its a good idea to keep a "birdie first-aid kit" handy with a good styptic powder incase of an accident. :)
