Playing with towels as an intro for "toweling" later on? ALL ADVICE APPRECIATED :)

[It's_all_about_Karma]

Hi everyone. My first actual post, but have gotten a ton of info and ideas from reading everyone else's, so I owe u all a thank u before I even ask my question!

 

Ok, our girl's name is Karma. We've gotten her leash trained and familiar with water for bathing/misting through slowly introducing both as things to play with, and it's worked great - she actually gets excited when she sees her leash because she knows she's going outside.

 

BUT, she's 11 months old and we haven't done anything as far as toweling. Honestly, we never had to restrain any of our birds for wing or nail clipping, and since we leave them either flighted or semi-flighted (can fly from high position, but can't get lift from ground) we don't do either very often. Sand or pedi-perches were all our green cheek ever needed.

 

Karma, however, could cut glass with her nails DESPITE having every type/shape of perch possible. Since this is her first nail trim, were having the vet do it, but i know he towels for nail clips. Other than her 6month visit, she's never been toweled.

 

At 11 months, did we miss the opportunity to make this stress-free?

 

I'm worried because even if we don't need to towel her for stuff like nail clipping (she's fine with us picking up & holding her toes) there's ALWAYS the chance of a first aid emergency requiring us to restrain her, and obviously an emergency would be the worst time to spring something unfamiliar and scary on her.

 

So, any thoughts or suggestions? Has anyone else had to towel & if so, how did your bird react to it? Did you towel BEFORE it was necessary to get your bird used to it?

 

Last, is it normal for her nails to be so SHARP? They aren't particularly long or overgrown in any way, just sharp.She has a zillion things to climb on and destroy, tons of wood and we've spent a ton of $$ on perches guaranteed to help with nails, but I swear, she must use them to sharpen them when we aren't watching! Oh, and perches are size appropriate and varied, so that not the problem.

 

She's such an amazing baby girl, we want to make as few mistakes as possible during these important years.

 

Thank you!

[Zoom]

Welcome! I can't tell you if it's normal, since I'm brand new at this. But I can tell you that my baby Grey has lethal toenails compared to my Amazon and lovebird.

[Vamppire]

Well, I can only add that Spencer had his nails filed when I first got him, then 6 months later his nails were sharp enough to leave long-lasting scratches all over my arms. I swapped his sandy perch (one that has the sand on the sides, not the top) with the top perch he always sits on to sleep and play with his foraging toy, and that did the trick, within a couple weeks his nails were bearable again. Maybe you just need to put the nail-filing perch in the place that's most used?

 

Before I sorted that out, I started to work on toweling too.... basically by rewarding him each time he tolerated the towel near him... the goal being that i could get it closer and closer to him, then touching him, then around him etc. I saw a youtube video instructing how to do this and it seemed to make sense, so that's what I went with I stopped when his nails filed down on their own, but I'll be picking it up again soon...

 

Good luck!

[judygram]

Josey has some rough perches but it is not enough to keep her nails filed down where they are not like needles but I have never managed to be able to trim them myself so I have to take her to the vets for that, they towel her so its not like I do it myself and then I am the rescuer who takes her away from that awful procedure.

It probably is a good thing to teach your bird to not be fearful of a towel and you can make a game of it like hide and seek to make it fun and associate having a good time with a towel instead of just something to use to restrain them but then the first time you use it for restraining then they aren't going to like it again, my opinion.