Post by siobhan on Oct 31, 2014 0:02:23 GMT -5
I've had Ringo for over two years, since she was just a baby about 3 weeks old. Throughout that time, I've had to try to periodically clip her toenails, which is problematic at best because starlings do not like to be touched in any way. She can touch ME. She walks all over me and peers under my clothes and rearranges my hair and pokes holes in my skin. But to clip her nails, I had to invent a sneaky way of doing it. I would wait until she was sitting on top of her cage, get the clippers and come at her from underneath. I managed to get one or maybe two and she'd cuss in Starling and zoom across the room and it sometimes took two weeks to do all eight toes.
However, I haven't had to do it for a long while now. For some reason I don't understand -- but I'm not COMPLAINING -- suddenly they're staying short on their own. She's always been prone to march around the floor, which is hardwood, but that didn't work before. She has a wide variety of perches of different types including one made of grapevine (which cost a bundle and she hated for months but finally began to use it about a year ago). Nothing has changed in her cage or her room so I don't know what's keeping them short but I'm very glad. I also had to invent a way for her to keep her own beak trimmed because I guarantee she wouldn't have let me do anything about THAT. Captive starlings are really prone to overgrown beaks and nails, far more than parrots are, because they're designed to be used to find their food. Starlings poke at the ground and tree bark and rocks and things to catch bugs to eat and that keeps them in shape in the wild. And they don't gnaw on toys like parrots do. I gave her a tray of rocks and I put her treats among the rocks so she has to peck to get to them, and thankfully she likes to just peck the rocks in general and toss them around.
However, I haven't had to do it for a long while now. For some reason I don't understand -- but I'm not COMPLAINING -- suddenly they're staying short on their own. She's always been prone to march around the floor, which is hardwood, but that didn't work before. She has a wide variety of perches of different types including one made of grapevine (which cost a bundle and she hated for months but finally began to use it about a year ago). Nothing has changed in her cage or her room so I don't know what's keeping them short but I'm very glad. I also had to invent a way for her to keep her own beak trimmed because I guarantee she wouldn't have let me do anything about THAT. Captive starlings are really prone to overgrown beaks and nails, far more than parrots are, because they're designed to be used to find their food. Starlings poke at the ground and tree bark and rocks and things to catch bugs to eat and that keeps them in shape in the wild. And they don't gnaw on toys like parrots do. I gave her a tray of rocks and I put her treats among the rocks so she has to peck to get to them, and thankfully she likes to just peck the rocks in general and toss them around.
