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Broken Nails - Part 4 - Your Basic Bird First Aid Kit |
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Bird Articles -
General Birdcare
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If you find your bird bleeding from a broken nail or you have perhaps clipped a nail a bit too short and the nail is bleeding a bit, grab your first aid kit. If the nail has been broken off very short, there may be a lot of blood; if it is a nail clipping accident, there will probably be little blood. Capture and constrain the bird so you can apply treatment.
Wet a gauze pad or swap with hydrogen peroxide and clean the bleeding nail. Then apply styptic powder in copious amounts. You can’t use too much, but too little can be ineffective. Press the powder on the bleeding area with a clean gauze pad and hold with a light pressure – or if badly bleeding, a fairly strong pressure.
After a minute or so, remove the gauze pad and check the bleeding. It should have slowed significantly. Reapply additional styptic powder and if no more blood appears, your bird will be fine, although the nail may be sore for a day or two. This is normally the case; very seldom will bleeding fail to stop. If the problem was clipping nails to short, be more careful next time.
Should you remove the gauze pad and find a lot of blood continuing to flow reapply a great deal of styptic powder to the injury and apply pressure. If, after maintaining pressure for several minutes the blood has not clotted and the flow stopped, it’s time to seek professional assistance. Should the cause be a broken nail leaving jagged edges or a broken nail piece hanging free that will re-injure the nail during normal use, you should stop all bleeding prior to clipping off any jagged portions. When you do clip, you may have bleeding re-occur, so have the kit ready, and stop the bleeding. The reason for trimming any jagged or hanging broken piece of nail is so the bird will not have the wound open when you are not there to help and experience serious or even fatal bleeding before you return. For a large bird such as a macaw or cockatoo with a seriously broken nail, you may want to wait for all bleeding to stop, and after 12-24 hours, clean off the styptic powder, clean the wound with hydrogen peroxide and apply more styptic powder, wrapping the nail in a bit of gauze that you tape to the nail for added protection. I’ve never seen this necessary in smaller birds.
If you do have to go to the vet, keep styptic powder and a gauze pad on the injury and the bird constrained. The vet may have to cauterize (burn) the nail to stop the bleeding and this is not a procedure for home first aid. In an extreme case, the vet might have to remove the nail, but that is rather rare and only required in the most serious nail injuries.
Other Bleeding
If your bird has caused bleeding from scraping a leg or the top of its head and is bleeding slightly, simply grab the first aid kit, capture the bird and follow the instruction for nail bleeding. Once you have stopped the bleeding completely, clean the wound with a gauze pad dampened with alcohol or peroxide. If bleeding is severe, perform the first step of applying styptic powder and compress with a gauze pad while traveling to the vet. Severe bleeding from a deep cut is a serious injury and you will need antibiotic shots, and professional measures to ensure your bird’s health.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 23 December 2006 )
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Bird Care