[Chief's Mom]

Pedi-perches/cement perches work for some of our birds but not for others, but every cage has at least one in them. My vet charges $7.50 to trim nails, which isn't bad, but he's an hour away, so it's not very convienient. What we try to do is file their nails regularly. When we cuddle at night to watch TV, I'll file a few nails just to keep them down. Most of my birds are okay with it, so it works out okay...Chief's the only one whose deathly afraid of a nail file(of course, the biggest bird is our biggest scardy bird!).

I doubt that most birds would sit still long enough with one of those rotary files because of the noise they make. For the small birds, I use a regular people nail clipper. For the bigger birds, I use a dog style nail clipper. You can use flour or corn starch to stop the bleeding if you do happen to clip too short. You can also purchase QuikStop, but do not use this product on their skin...it burns!

Honestly, if you don't feel comfortable doing it, it's probably better just to bring them to vet. Chief will let me file them every once in a while, but other than that, I bring her to the vet regularly. All the others only see the vet for nail trims twice a year.