A rooster\u2019s spurs gradually grow, and after a year or two, they may be an inch or two long. If you run a rooster in with your hens, he will mate with them during the breeding season. It involves holding on to feathers on the back of a hen\u2019s neck and stepping onto her back for a few seconds while mating.<\/p>\n
Claws and spurs can cause damage to the\u00a0back and sides\u00a0of your hens. While short spurs don\u2019t usually cause harm, and we often use poultry saddles\u00a0to provide some protection, excessively long spurs can easily tear the skin. It is a good idea to\u00a0trim roosters’ spurs\u00a0to keep them short, every so often.<\/p>\n
We can miss the damage from spurs as the wings can cover up sore and torn skin. You should always\u00a0inspect your hens regularly, and as soon as their favourite mates can be identified (or if you have a small number of hens running with a cock) they should have saddles fitted to protect their backs. If the skin becomes torn, the hen risks getting an infection.<\/p>\n
We can trim spurs back and round the ends off and keep them to a suitable length, but similar to dog\u2019s nails, we must not cut them back too far in one go, or they will bleed.<\/p>\n
Trimming Rooster\u00a0Spurs:<\/strong><\/p>\n Trimming rooster spurs is easy enough, yet strangely\u00a0a lot of people do not know\u00a0how to trim rooster spurs. You will need a\u00a0sharp pair of cutters\u00a0to cut them, large dog nail clippers like these\u00a0are ideal, or tool shops sometimes sell almost identical round wire cutters. You will also need\u00a0a file\u00a0for rounding the edges off afterwards.<\/p>\n Be careful not to trim too much off the spur. A blood vessel runs down the centre that should not be cut. It is usually\u00a0\u00be <\/strong>of the way along the spur.<\/p>\n Trim the point, then keep nipping small pieces off millimetre by millimetre until you see a tiny dot of blood appear in the centre of the spur. It is the top of the blood vessel and is as far as you can go.<\/p>\n It is important to\u00a0take your time, so you don\u2019t end up with the spur bleeding.<\/p>\n If you reach the blood vessel and the spur is still too long, then\u00a0you will need to wait a few weeks\u00a0for it to withdraw a little from the end of the spur before trimming your rooster\u2019s spurs again.<\/p>\n Using the file, you can\u00a0round the edges\u00a0of the spurs off to make them neat.<\/p>\n If you trim too far, the spur will bleed, and it will be challenging to stop bleeding (just like dogs’ nails).<\/p>\n A veterinary caustic (Silver Nitrate) pencil\u00a0will stop the bleeding. They are cheap and last a long time, so I would encourage you to keep one in stock for when you are trimming rooster spurs. It can be dabbed on the spur\u2019s end to stop the bleeding and is also useful when trimming chicken nails.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have a silver nitrate pencil, then hold a piece of clean tissue onto the spur. It can take 10 to 15 minutes to stop the bleeding if it\u2019s bleeding profusely.<\/p>\n Now you know how to trim rooster spurs. As you can see, it\u2019s not too difficult and can be done in just a few minutes once you get the hang of it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A rooster\u2019s spurs gradually grow, and after a year or two, they may be an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chicken"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113195,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113193\/revisions\/113195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}