Cut the Quick

Cutting a rooster's nails for the first time and I cut one nail too short. I feel terrible. Is there anything other than white flour I can put on the nail to stop bleeding. It is helping but want to make sure I do it really well before I put him back out. Poor fella.

Please if any other suggestions, tell me how to apply it if it's not clear.

Thansk so much.

ChicoryFarm wrote:Cutting a rooster's nails for the first time and I cut one nail too short. I feel terrible. Is there anything other than white flour I can put on the nail to stop bleeding. It is helping but want to make sure I do it really well before I put him back out. Poor fella.

Please if any other suggestions, tell me how to apply it if it's not clear.

Thansk so much.

Go to a pet store and buy some Quick Stop. or you can try corn starch, best have a jar of Quick Stop on hand

Always good to have some Quick Stop around.

You can also try a bar of soap and jam the nail into it and twist it in. Sounds awful but works if you dont have quick stop or you can also get silver nitrate sticks.

Last summer I was triming my old bantam roosters spurs and when I went to take one more little piece off the whole outer nail casing came off and bled like stink. I ended up haveing to get a clamp from my horse 1st aid kit to stop it! Try not to go that far

You guys are so great. Thank you. It is doing okay but will get some cornstarch on there anyways and buy some Quick Stop tomorrow. We're in good shape here now.

Ya, fuzzy, I hear you, I couldn't believe how long his nails were and went to cut just a little more only to realize it's mostly quick. Terrible feeling.

Thank you!

Before using silver nitrate or Quick Stop, which might be like a styptic pencil, I suggest you try it yourself on a shaving nick. You want to drop to the ground screaming? Stick one of those styptic pencils on your bleeding flesh. And I have been burned with silver nitrate. Yes, it BURNS, cauterizes. Mega ouch! I like the soap idea which might sting but nothing like silver nitrate. Plug it with soap instead of give that bleeding bird a reason to never come near you again!

The flour and cornstarch worked better than I thought it would and I found if I just kept gently pressing a fingerful against the quick for about 10 minutes it finally stopped.

And on the whole nail trimming topic, what I realized is that - a) chickens have very long quicks, b) you need to have very good light and be able to see the quick, c) if you can't see the quick, don't clip. It's a very tender part of the body to accidentally snip. I'm hoping it won't become infected now.

Yes the flour/cornstarch then jam the soap on can work really well. I ended up putting a furacin bandage on it for about 3 days because it was the whole bone exposed after the nail fell off.

Silver nitrate is awful but it works. I had a friend whos dr tried it on her after a post baby birthing trauma. She agreed then she said it hurt so bad she almost kicked the dr in the face. After that she said she would never cut a dogs nails to short ever again!

Just so you know I don't routinely cut animals nails short to bleed but I work emergency in a small animal vet clinic. Its a frequent question people call into ask.

What's a furacin bandage fuzzy?

It just a little wrap with some furacin ointment on a gauze pad wrapped with vet wrap. You would also see it as nitrofuratonin. Its an antibiotic ointment. you could make a little wrap and use honey. Would be fine as well. I would not worry to much about infection but you could wrao it for a few days to be safe.

I use quick stop . Being a dog breeder it is something that I feel I should always have on hand.

I once had a very old bantam Cochin roo who's spurs had grown so long that they were actually curving back around, under and into the bottoms of his feet! Due to the fact that I don't snuggle my birds and because of all his feathers covering his feet, I didn't notice the lengths of his spurs until he was walking funny!

Anyways, I had heard once that all you have to do is twist the spur back and forth and the hard part should come off like an antelope's horn sheath. Well I tried this and of course it didn't work for me! I must not have been biting my tongue on the correct side of my mouth that day I guess. Seeings how the rooster was not digging it too much, I thought I would just trim them back with a pair of K9 nail trimmers instead and let him be on his way. I knew that I would have to be careful not to trim too far, but I had no idea how long their flesh nub went inside that spur sheath!!!

I started trimming a bit at a time because of how twisted the spur was and then I thought I could see the quick when I was attempting the final snip, but thats right, I was wrong! I sniped it just a bit too short. He wasn't bleeding bad at all. It was just starting to leak though very slowly. Nothing that a rub of the styptic pencil wouldn't fix!

I thought OK, now I know what I have to do for the second one. Wrong again!!! This flesh nub was even longer than the other side! And despite my efforts to leave more spur this time, it started to spew blood badly!!! I knew the pencil wasn't going to work for this one so I happened to have a little propane torch handy so I heated up a framing nail and cauterized it!

I know it sounds bad, but it stopped the bleeding and that little rooster was better than normal in a day or two!