Talk to me about safe restraint for birds of varying sizes.

Say, small conure to Cape sizes, LOL.

I've read about restraint both using a towel and bare-handed and I was holding my MILs WFA for my husband long before we haven had birds, but I still feel less than confident about where and how hard I can hold. I find it especially difficult with Scooter, who is so small. Maybe those of you who deal with lots of birds can help me out.

With a small bird is it better to use a towel or not?

How do I know if I have the right grip on the head? I know I want the sides of the face, roughly behind the upper beak... but my fingers are almost as big as his head, I can't really see what I'm doing, how should this grip feel? How firmly can I grip without worrying about hurting him? How do I know if my grip is getting too firm? Do birds often get injured while being restrained? How do these accidents most often happen? How fragile are they, really?

Once you have the head, what is the best way to stabilize the rest of the bird (say for a second person to inspect a suspect area or to trim wings or nails). I know you don't want to compress the chest, but where can you hold and how hard.

Do you do towel desensitization and practice restraint with your birds? Do you restrain regularly for grooming, or do you train them to permit grooming unrestrained?

Is there some kind of prop I could use to practice so I'm more confident with my guys?

have the vet show you the next time you go in. its impossible to describe online.

I don't think you need to restrain your birds to do nails and wings. Nails are a bigger deal for me because we don't need to do them as often as wings but if you can handle your birds then either of these shouldn't be a big deal, i guess you being confident in what your doing is the biggest hurtle. Wing clips are no big deal, i keep up with them so only have to cut a feather or two .Nails i just do one every day or two and make a game of it . Towels seem to be a bit traumatic.

Well, yeah, I reckon I should get them good with trimming without restraint, but I'd like to be good at it in case of an emergency anyway... plus we aren't that good about keeping up with the wings. And Scooter has decided he's touch about his. But, yeah, I agree in principle it shouldn't be necessary for routine grooming.. it still seems like something I should be able to do. I know how to restrain cats for treatment and claw clipping and I know how to hold a horse for the vet...

I realize i didn't get into restraining your fids. That's one of those things that's hard to describe. it's too easy to get it wrong and the best thing to do is watch your vet asst. In general i hold the head by making a ring with thumb and fore finger . If holding belly down i use my fingers of the other hand to hold the legs and if belly up i just sort of cradle them, i don't know how to describe it any better but it's a two person job to do anything other than hold them. Smaller birds like tiels i can hold in one hand but do get bit sometimes. The bites i can take but it;s not any fun.Larger birds like your cape are a two person job and i think your miles ahead by doing a little bit at the time and not restraining him.

I cuddle all my pets and babies regularly in towels. They see a towel and they don't panic or really react in any negative manner even when I end up restraining with the towel. If you're not really confident then a towel seems easier because there's some wiggle room for them to bite the towel and not you.

Maybe get your birds used to being toweled and developing a positive association, then have someone w/ experience show you how to hold and restrain with a towel. Then pass the bird back and forth in the towel. You and the bird will both develop confidence and relaxation when restraining, even when something negative happens when toweled.

All of our babies start out being happy with a towel because Josie uses one when hand feeding them, it's when they grow older and aren't handled with a towel ,but that's our fault.

That's such a great idea, using a towel to feed them with... And with the smaller birds, (Scooter/JJ/Chico/Cheney Bird/Einstein/Sam/etc... and budgies/lovies), maybe even using a washcloth would help to make that positive association.

As for me, I tried using a towel when I was doing my fids toes but soon found out it was actually easier for ME to do it w/o the towel. Yeah, The Buckmeister does his best sometimes to remove the flesh from my bones, but he doesn't do it all the time... And let's face it, I've got flesh to spare.

As for "how" to restrain, I agree that it's probably hard to describe in words, but I've wondered the same thing myself SnS. I just figure that when it comes time to restrain my bird for someone else, if they want it done a certain way, they can show me how they want it done. Otherwise, I'll do it myself the best way I know how. I'm quite comfortable holding JJ so she can't escape... I've needed to look at her toes when Bucky's bitten them (the butt) or one time when she seemed to get her door caught in the loose weave of one of our drapes... Tried to take off and flapped like a crazy thing. I was sure shed broken SOMETHING, but she was fine, but she s.u.r.e. didn't want me to touch her.

I restrained her then, and she wasn't happy, but she wasn't hurt.

Anyhoo, that's my half-cents worth. Hope it didn't hurt!

I actually do a lot of restraint, clipping of nails and wings of IRN-sized birds on down by myself with a towel. When done w/ one person there's a bit of juggling and using my body to reposition the bird. I'll try to get some video of it today and post later.

Bare handed restraint:



Note: This is a bird that's used to hands and being grabbed. With a bird that's more defensive and/or flighty, you might have to pin the head like a snake first. I'm holding the cheek bones with one hand and second hand's holding the feet and tail area. No pressure around the chest area so the bird can breathe. Note how I put the bird up against my body if necessary in order to readjust my grip.



Restraint with a towel:

That's pretty good roz, come over and give that a try with a couple of zons i know, LOL ,Good work with your fids your a pro.

Cool. I'll have to study those!

I use towels to cut nails for all my fids. And yes, the smaller bird, the harder it is to keep him not moving. I don't clip wings, but when I clip Mango(budgie) beak, I don't towel him.
For Lucky I have to use one kitchen glow, to not be bitten.
How I learn to towel birds? I did it with my bunny, pretty the same:)

I enjoyed Roz's video. I have to buy camera finally!

henpecked wrote:

That's pretty good roz, come over and give that a try with a couple of zons i know, LOL ,Good work with your fids your a pro.

Dude! I CAN restrain larger birds. My red-sides are larger than DYHs. I just can't clip and all that on a bird that size by myself, unless they're super tame. I used to squish my CAG between my legs and do her nails and wings.

My vet uses a paper towel on the small ones. This is mostly because actual towels are too bulky for them and/or they're scared. When I have to restrain the little ones, I just use my bare hand.

This is a YouTube vid on how to clip a budgie, but it shows an easy way to hold the little-guys (especially if they're even a little bit tame) for restraint. I've used it and it works really well on budgies and lovies.

Link - How to Clip a Budgie's Wings

That's very close to the restraint I use for Merlin, one finger on either side of his head. I call it "The Claw"

"The Claw"

I prefer to use a towel cuz Marty is a biter but if I have to ill use mu hands even if I bet bit lol. At school the maxamillion pionus was flying around and I was the only one who knew about birds so they made me catch her and I had to restrain her with my hands -.- I got some chunks missing out of my hand lol

With our GCCs we use a tea towel as its much thinner and smaller, less bulk to deal with. Tika seems to loe being toweled, she lays back and cuddles into it, which is great cause she can bite chronically!! Rory doesn't bite much at all so I just use my hands. I put my thumb and forefinger on either side of their beak and my palm and other fingers on either side of their wings, I find that way I'm not restricting breathing and they don't feel as trapped. Also if I put my thumb over rory's belly he grabs it and pulls himself out by it! Little brat.
If towels are too bulky, find a pair of good fitting gloves (I use my old riding gloves) not knitted ones tho cause they're too slippy. Much simpler.

Toweling is the best restraint, though I am so used to doing all sized birds bare handed its like second nature to me. Its easier to do larger birds bare handed because they have more to grab onto. WIth small birds, toweling is the way to go

Back in the dark ages, that's how I clipped the budgies wings. Something I did to calm them down a bit was to dim the lights.