I've gone to the dark side -- getting the birds "groomed"

So we're going out of town for a week, a million things need to get done, I've never gotten Scotty properly trained to let me handle his wings and Scooter's a mess right now so I'm not keen on man-handling him and I don't want to leave him fully flighted with the sitter so... to make a long story short, I'm going to take them to my favorite bird store and get their wings trimmed tomorrow. Prices seem very reasonable, the people there seem eminently sensible and it'll leave us set up to get them out and about more when we get back from Paris. (For work, for work!)

They've asked us to bring our own towels and I know they are careful about health testing for boarding. I hope this doesn't turn out to be a big mistake. How can I make this as positive an outing as possible?

honestly i do this to marty and mikko because i dont want them to have any reason to be mad at me! their both rescues so their trust is hard to earn! i take mine to my favorite parrot store to be groomed and they are stressed when they are there but when we get home i give them their favorite treats and they act like i rescued them from the bad people lol

I;d still be handy to make sure they don't whack em, make sure they only cut a few primarys.

coral wrote:

honestly i do this to marty and mikko because i dont want them to have any reason to be mad at me! their both rescues so their trust is hard to earn! i take mine to my favorite parrot store to be groomed and they are stressed when they are there but when we get home i give them their favorite treats and they act like i rescued them from the bad people lol

The first 10 years or so of bird keeping, I always had the bird store do wings and nails. My experience is the same as Coral's. The birds seem to think you're the one "saving" them from being tortured. Mine were always more lovey towards me after wings/nails done by a stranger.

Maybe that's where I screwed up with Arthur! I did his wings myself recently, maybe this is why he is running away from me! Maybe I should have someone else try to straighten out his wings and then "rescue him"? You think?

I have always had my birds groomed at the same place. I'm not the bad guy and I get to play with the other birds while I wait.

As often as possible, have someone aside from yourself groom the birds. I've groomed hundreds of rescue birds and its half and half. Some flip out, some don't care. Nails are the big horror, none of them like nail trimming. Beaks are a close second.
I do my own but I make it fun. In fact, Sebastian has been chewing on his cage and he chipped the tip of his beak so it was really sharp and pointy and I had to dremel it down. He's a big guy (bigger than normal, like green-wing size) so I just let him stand on my lap and I joke with him. We have a very close bond that personally I think is extraordinary...as in abnormally close and eerily familiar. I can usually treat him like a person and talk to him and he understands. I sit him on my knee and pull out the dremel and hold his beak and do what I have to. Of course this time he decided to be mischievous and kept trying to grab the dremel and ended up biting down on it and it came to a grinding halt and rattled his brain a little and he giggled. (yup)
Arthur has a bad scissor beak and I have to do him every other week or so. I do towel him, but I do it so often that he knows when he sees that red towel that he's finally going to have a straight beak again, which he loves so he basically runs over and lays in the towel for me. Funny thing is that once I have him wrapped he starts making this "br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r" noise, which is I am sure the sound the dremel makes in his head, which I think is hysterical.

RogerP wrote:

Maybe that's where I screwed up with Arthur! I did his wings myself recently, maybe this is why he is running away from me! Maybe I should have someone else try to straighten out his wings and then "rescue him"? You think?

Possibly. I make sure I have a good relationship with a bird first before I do the nasty stuff, unless I don't care about the relationship such as in the case of breeders. A retired semi tame timneh I had - he was petrified of me I think because he connected me with towels and "procedures". Same with the hubby as hubby assisted me with a lot of the "procedures". However, with EC he was completely different and very nice as she had never done anything negative to him.

I've only been bitten by Einstein once...one time at the vet, the woman wanted me to hold him as she clipped his nails. He was not happy with me, and gave me a nice hard chomp.

From then on, I refuse to be in the room while they do it.

I just kinda force 'tough love' when clipping nails and grab toes hard/cuddle Apple while he's perched somewhere.

Nail trims are done after a bath for the budgies. I can hold Pigpen somewhat still to get her done. Piper fidgets a bit more. Cheney Bird is done at a vet.

Well I think everyone survived the event with minimal trauma and I was very pleased with the way they handled the birds. They were happy to do exactly what I wanted, which is also a plus. They did do the initial catch in a small room in the back since both were pretty flighted (Scotty had 100% of his flight feathers) but they brought them back out front to do the actual trimming so I could see how they handled the birds and how the birds reacted. They were effective but pretty gentle and neither bird seemed very stressed at all. This was way better than when Scotty was trimmed at the store where we got him, which a pretty harsh catch and manhandling. Both birds talked on the way home and Scotty apparently looked at the guy at the store when he was first caught up and said "Wow!". For $25 total, I'm a pretty happy camper. Of course I spent way more than that on treats and toys since I felt so bad about having them tortured.

They did the dremel thing on the toes and I was surprised that neither bird really seemed bothered by it -- do most birds accept that without it being a big deal?

I've found dremels to be a huge help and most birds don't mind them. And when doing beaks and nails, its a much quicker procedure. I've also found there is less nail bleeding because the dremel tends to basically cauterize the tips. No pain and definitely easier than dealing with clippers and quickstop.