I've been communicating by email with someone as to the progress of their bird's training and was told of a tragedy that took place recently with their pet budgie.

 

The person felt that her bird's claws were too long and decided to give it a trim and unknowingly cut too far. She is of course devastated.

 

I'm only writing this to warn anyone reading this of the consequences of not knowing the anatomy of a budgie's foot.

 

Basically, exercise extreme care if trimming a budgie's claws. You would only do this if they were excessively long and were a safety issue for the bird.

 

If you look closely at a budgie's claws you will see a vein running down the centre of the claw towards the tip.

It is imperative that you never cut into this vein.

I don't trust myself to do anything with either of my birds' nails. Leo's nails are black and make it next to impossible to see the vein, and Pandora's so small if I so much as twitched wrong she could start bleeding. I just stick with a concrete perch in the cage to let them use when they please. Pandora hasn't investigated hers yet, but Leo loves his. He loves scraping his beak on it, as well.

I used to trim my first budgies nails with no troubles...someone showed me how the first time. Now, 5 years later i've lost my nerve and would never even try. I'd be terrified of cutting too far and the budgie bleeding to death.

I never trim my budgies' nails. They seem to know when their nails are long or not and somehow they always stay in the same length. Maybe they nip on it or trim it themselves? But so far, no problems in regards to nails.