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You might ask why? Why in the world would I bother to clip my rabbits’ toenails of all things? I barely manage to do my own much less my rabbit’s. Well there are several very important reasons to clip your rabbit's toenails.
The most important reasons are safety and comfort, both yours and your rabbit’s. For example, you decide to pickup your bunny and move him to another area, he gets scared and attempts to escape by taking off really fast (they are a “flight” rather than a “fight” animal anyway). In the process of leaving in a hurry, your rabbit tears large scratches on all over your arms, chest, shoulders, etc. This, of course, is not comfortable at all…blood, torn skin…yuk! And for your rabbit it’s not much better. Inside pets, as well as, outside caged rabbits can easily catch their long nails in the carpet or cage floor wire. If you’ve ever caught and torn a nail or broken one very, very short you know how painful this can be…for days as it grows back. Well, rabbits can tear their entire nail out by catching it on something and panicking. So…now that we know why, let us get into the how.
You should first assemble all the necessary supplies. All you need is a good pair of nail clippers, a helper and of course, a rabbit who needs its’ nails clipped. There are several types of clippers you may choose from. Toenail clippers for dogs, cat claw scissors or human nail clippers will all work. Preference is towards cat claw scissors for several reasons i.e. they don’t shatter or split the nail as much as human nail clippers and they are smaller and easier to use than dog nail clippers.
So, you’ve got your helper, nail clippers of choice and the rabbit…where should you start?
Have your helper hold the rabbit in a sitting up position on their lap, the rabbit on its rump facing outward resting its back against your helpers front. Grasp the a front leg gently but firmly and expose the dewclaw (the toenail on the inside of the front foot). Clip the nail just to the outside of the quick (or vein), you don’t want to make the rabbit bleed. Repeat this for all the toenails on the front feet (5 on each side, including the dewclaws). After you’ve finished the both front feet, you’ll probably need to give all three of you a few minutes break before continuing on to the hind feet. The routine is the same as before, but your helper may want to tip the rabbit slightly farther back to make reaching the rear feet a little bit easier. The rabbits' back feet will just stick up in the air, making them easy to get to. Rabbits have four nails (no dewclaws)on each rear foot. Continue just as before, cutting just to the outside edge of the quick. You may try shining a bright light through the toenail to make seeing the vein a bit easier if the nail is a dark one.
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