Grooming Overview

Welcome to LifeWithParrots! We are a home-based business that offers a quality grooming service, providing our clients’ feathered companions with safe beak, nail, and wing trimming. We’ll do everything we can to ensure your bird has the best experience possible and you can feel confident knowing your bird’s beak, nails, and wings will be properly groomed.

How It’s Done:

For beak and nail trimming, we use a Dremel at low speed without sedation as it reduces the risk of breaking a blood vessel and removes the risks associated with sedating birds. Dremel bits are disinfected after each grooming session using a steam cleaner to keep them clean and sanitary for the next bird. If we are unable to trim a bird’s nails with the Dremel due to the bird’s comfort level, we will use nail clippers instead, with “Kwik Stop” on hand if any bleeding occurs.

Blood Feathers And Nail Quicks:

Blood feathers (immature feather shafts) and long nail quicks (blood vessels) may prevent us from trimming wings and nails to the preferred length. We will do our best; however, it may take a couple of nail trims for the blood vessels to recede enough before we can get the nails down to a normal length. If your bird has blood feathers, they usually take a few weeks to grow out, which may allow your bird to fly.

Clipped Birds Can Still Fly!

Unfortunately, due to popular belief about clipping, many clipped birds taken outside without a harness, carrier, or travel cage end up flying away. Clipping wings may limit a bird’s ability to fly, but a strong wind or sudden spook may be enough for a clipped bird to take off out of eyesight. Please do NOT take clipped birds outside without a harness, carrier, or cage!!!

Does my bird need a beak trim?

Many birds do not require beak trims unless the beak is deformed or has become overgrown due to several reasons. Performing beak trims on birds who do not require them is ill-advised as it can cause pain to the bird from over-trimming, which can make eating, preening, and climbing very uncomfortable. If you’re not sure whether your bird needs a beak trim, you can send us a photo, and we’d be happy to offer our suggestion and book an appointment if they should have it trimmed.

HealthGene DNA Sexing:

Do you want to know if your bird is male or female? We offer DNA sexing through HealthGene by lightly bleeding a bird’s nail quick on a test kit, with results in 2-3 weeks. A few species are sexually dimorphic (Eclectus parrots, for example) or have minor visual differences once mature (such as most cockatiel colour mutations) and wouldn’t require a DNA sexing test, but for those that are harder to visually guess, we’re happy to help you find out!

Leg Band Removal:

Leg bands are a great way to identify birds, but they can also pose some risks of getting caught on things, becoming too tight as the bird grows, or even cutting off circulation to the foot if the leg becomes injured and swollen. For these reasons, we offer a band cutting service for any size of aluminum or plastic leg band, even if you just want to remove it preventively. Unfortunately, due to the strength of stainless steel, we can not remove stainless steel bands and suggest you contact Coastal Care or the Atlantic Veterinary College for recommendations.

Booking:

We offer grooming appointments on Mondays/Wednesdays from 12PM – 8PM, Tuesdays/Thursdays from 8AM – 11AM, and occasionally on weekends. Appointments MUST be scheduled ahead of time; we do not accept walk-ins. If you are over 30 minutes late for your scheduled appointment, we will reach out to confirm a new appointment time; however, if we do not hear from you, please do not show up without rescheduling your appointment, as we may not be home. If you need to cancel your grooming appointment, that’s no problem; just let us know as soon as possible.

Bird Requirements:

Be in generally good health. Plucking/barbering due to stress, habit, or hormones is acceptable
Be completely weaned for at least 2 weeks
Have no open wounds or recent major injuries (occurring within one (1) month before the appointment date)
Be harnessed or in a carrier when entering and exiting LifeWithParrots

Pricing:

Beak trim $35
Nail trim $25
Wing trim $15
HealthGene DNA sexing $60
Leg band removal $40

If you’re interested in bringing your feathered companion(s) to us for grooming, send us a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible to book an appointment. Any questions? Check out our FAQ section or contact us anytime by email, text, or Facebook Messenger. Thank you for your interest. Hope to see you and your feathered companion soon!

Pictured is a before-and-after trim of an overgrown beak. Super sweet bird and very happy owners!

Meet some of the previous birds who’ve come for grooming!