I spend a certain amount of time in the coop every day, and I try to keep tabs on every chicken. But sometimes I just miss stuff. For instance, there was the day that my wife, Kathy, on one of her occasional coop visits, asked me “What’s up with Emile’s spur?” Emile the rooster was perched on a roost bar just inside the coop. Normally his spurs are fairly invisible – completely obscured by the dandy feather pantaloons that go all the way down to his feet, in the popular Cochin fashion. But because of the way he was perched, one of his spurs was rakishly exposed. And it was curved—so curved it was almost winding back into his leg. Spurs can indeed sometimes grow all the way back into a rooster’s leg, causing pain and lameness. I instantly knew that Emile needed a trim—before that spur grew any more. And I decided that we would take care of all the guys while we were at it. So, we set up a spa day that very evening. Emile, Paul and Snowball all got dapper manicures. I can’t say that the guys were thrilled, but I was pretty happy with the end result.

Most roosters have spurs; spikey projections that grow from the inside of their shanks just above their toes. And most roosters have just one spur per leg. But Sumatra roosters, and a few other rarer breeds, can have multiple spurs on each leg—up to five. Spurs start out on young roosters as small bumps, called “spur buds” and gradually grow into long, sharp weapons. They are weapons! Roosters use their spurs to defend themselves and their flocks. When a rooster attacks, he propels himself forward feet first, intending to use his spurs to slash his target.

Most hens’ spurs don’t develop beyond buds, but some hens, as they get older, can develop some amazingly large spurs. Hens of the Mediterranean breeds (Leghorns, Andalusians, Sicilian Buttercups, etc.), as well as some game breeds are likely to grow spurs. And Sumatra hens will grow multiple spurs, just like their brothers.

If you were to x-ray a chicken spur, you would see that the tip is solidly made of the same keratin-rich horny material that covers the entire spur. It’s the same material that’s in a chicken’s toenail (or a human toenail!) and it’s dead. There are no nerve endings or blood supply. Starting about halfway down the spur and going all the way to the shank, there’s an inner core of living tissue, and inside this core is bone—an extension of the chicken’s shank bone. The presence of an inner core of bone makes spurs more analogous to horns than toenails.

Why Trim?

It’s pretty obvious that a spur on its way toward growing back into a rooster’s leg needs to be trimmed. But there are other compelling reasons. I’ve already mentioned the main one. Spurs are weapons. And let’s face it. Some roosters are jerks. They’re happy to attack anybody who dares set foot inside the coop. Because the coop is their domain, dammit! And they have to protect every square inch! All of my roos are pretty mellow guys most of the time, but sometimes Emile decides I’m messing with his girls too much, or he gets up on the wrong side of the roost, or he’s just suffering from a bout of existential crankiness. And he decides he has to take it out on me.

While most of us are a bazillion times bigger than any of our roosters, it is disconcerting to have a bundle of feathered fury careening towards us. When we find ourselves in those situations, knowing that the furious feather bundles are wielding shortened and blunted spurs can be a relief.

If your rooster is the world’s most nonchalant, laid-back, affable, peace-loving dude, you should still trim his spurs. You’d be doing it for the ladies. When a rooster mounts a hen during mating, spurs can cause some serious damage. While you can put protective saddles on your hens, sometimes trimming your rooster’s spurs is all you need to do to solve the rooster-damage problem.

What about trimming hens’ spurs? It’s situational! While hens can sometimes get madder than a wet hen even when they’re not even wet, they seldom use their spurs as weapons the way roosters do. But sometimes the spurs on older hens can get so large that they interfere with her ability to walk. And some hens develop the same problem that Emile has—their spurs curl back and grow into their shanks. In those situations, you need to trim!

Trimming Methods

It’s good to have a mental picture of the inside of a spur when you’re trimming. If you trim too closely to the shank, you'll cut live tissue and could even cut into bone. If you cut in the right place, it’s as simple and painless as trimming toenails.

Spur trimming is really a two-person job. You need one person to hold the squirming, frightened rooster, and one person to wield the trimming tool. The easiest time to trim spurs, or do anything with your chickens that requires lots of handling, is after their bedtime. They will be groggy and subdued and much easier to handle than during the day. You can bring them out of the coop into a lighted area, or better yet, keep them in the dark and use a headlamp. You should always have a jar of styptic powder on hand to stop the bleeding should you accidently go too deep. There are several methods for trimming, each with its own tool:

Dremel Rotary Grooming Tool

The main advantage of a Dremel tool is that it is sands rather than cuts. Because the process is gradual, you are less likely to get into the quick, the living part of the spur, and cause pain and bleeding. If you do venture into the quick, it will probably be a small superficial cut. Also, clippers, especially dull ones, pinch the spur and can cause it to crack, resulting in pain and bleeding.

The downside of a Dremel, is that it is bulkier than a clipper and it makes a humming noise. You can be sure that your rooster will be stressed and frightened during the trimming process, regardless of which method you use. And the Dremel will extend the period of stress and anxiety because the gradual trimming process is slower. And it involves the waving around of a big, scary, noisy thing!

Clippers

Trimming away the end of the spur with a pair of sharp pet grooming clippers is quick, easy and painless.

The operative word here is “sharp.” A dull clipper can function more like a nutcracker and actually crack the entire outer layer of the spur. You should trim about a third of the distance from the end of the spur. Clipping too close and cutting into the living tissue of the quick is a very easy mistake to make! And it causes pain and bleeding! Some spurs are just too large for clippers. The best cutting tools for large spurs: A fine-tooth hacksaw, either manual or a reciprocating electric, or a Dremel tool fitted with a cutting wheel. Using a reciprocating hacksaw or Dremel brings you back, of course, to the disadvantage of waving around of big, scary noisy things.

Pliers with a Hot Potato

There’s another method that you will see bandied about that I think is abhorrent and barbaric. Grab the spur with a pair of pliers, squeeze gently, and wiggle the spur back and forth until the entire outer keratinous sheath of the spur detaches from the inner core and you can pull it completely off. What remains (and remains exposed) is the live inner core. There will be blood with this procedure and it will cause pain. Plus, the exposed tissue is prone to becoming infected.

I suggest that this process is on par with grabbing your fingernail with pliers and pulling it out by the roots. If you were to have your fingernails pulled out, you would probably wince, scream, and cry. Chickens don’t do any of those things when their spurs are pulled off, leading to the belief in certain quarters that they are not in pain. Here’s the headline: Chickens don’t react to pain the way humans do. Chickens are part of a social group pecking order and they are prey animals. They put themselves at a disadvantage if they display a reaction to pain. Their stoicism is an evolved self-preservation response. But the pain they feel is every bit on the same scale as the pain we humans feel.

A variation on the “pliers” method is to first plunge the spur into a hot potato before applying the pliers, to “loosen it up.” This method scalds living tissue before it is ripped away. No. Just no.

Spa Day in the Coop

We trimmed after poultry bedtime, and it went fast. We nabbed each of the guys off the roost one at a time. Kathy was the holder and I was the trimmer. I used a clipper for this session, and I got the job done with one clip per spur. While we had styptic on hand, we didn’t need it.

Emile, as the alpha roo, got to be first. He seemed fairly stressed by the whole deal. I’m pretty sure he was frantically thinking “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME??!!” But in no time at all he was back on the roost, with a shortened spur that was no longer threatening to grow back into his shank.

Paul brought up the rear. Paul’s spurs are so amazingly large that had they been any bigger, I would not have been able to use the clippers. But I quickly and painlessly got the job done and then Paul was also securely back on the roost in the comfort of the coop. Paul, a frizzled bantam Cochin, is the smallest roo, at the bottom of the pecking order, and is also covered in very silly curly feathers. So, the fact that his spurs are so large that they barely fit in the clippers undoubtedly goes a long way toward assuaging his self-esteem.

It's nice when life sometimes benevolently evens things out.