nails with rodents and small animals

hello, could you please help me out a bit?
i am writing an article, and i need pictures of properly groomed nails. i would like to show people, how long nails are allowed to be.
i can only make a picture of dog nails, as i only have dogs.
i would nedd pics of rabbits, hamsters, chinchillas, guinea pigs, rats...
could you please take pictures of your animal's foot, to show nails?
PLEASE it would mean a lot

thank you in advance!

I can do this for you tomorrow if i have time? on rats anyway! I can do a photo demo of how to clip?

xx

Done for you!

Firstly... you take your subject, in this case it's the lovely Russian Silver Boy - Wazoo!


His nails were getting rather too long - you can see far more white than you're supposed to! Main problem with this is that it hurts when you hold the rat.


There are all sorts of clippers, I use a small human nail clippers like this:


Sit somewhere comfortable, with good light, and place the rat on your lap as in the picture. You can then hold the foot that you want to do in one hand, and clip with the other.


Try to be careful not to cut past the quick - you can see where the nail turns pink, if you nick that, the nail will bleeed. This is not a desperate situation, and with pressure, and perhaps a dab of styptic powder or cornflour the bleeding will stop, but it is frustrating. I don't cut nails very short, just take the sharp edges off.


Then you turn the rat around to do the other foot (this is for back feet by the way)


When the nails have been snipped they should be nice and rounded and look like this:


For the front, I find it helps to have the rat stand on their back legs and give you their hand - as in the photo - this means with two fingers of your clipper hand, you can hold the head away from the nails - as the rat will usually want to sniff! This can be very tricky, especially with more struggly rats/inexperienced owners. It takes some practice, and patience! We can do a full set of nails in less than a minute now.


when clipped - the nails should look like this:


hope that helps! may put this on my site too actually!

xx

thank you! you are great

hope it's ok! what's the article for? do you need any other rat articles? I'm more than happy to help - just let me know! (probably best pointing me to any requests via pm though - i often forget to look here!)

xx

Yay great pics - gotta do my lot tonight as show tomorrow - meant to do them yesterday but a certain rat (blue and rather curly) made me drop the clippers down the loo and even after fishing I didn't fancy using them again!

Good luck tomorrow Julie

Thank you Your good luck worked

Oh BRILLIANT!!! Clever ratty

More trophy than rat

hehe! *in voice of bulldog from tom and jerry* "Dat's mah boy!"

well done!

xx