preserving

[darkbloodwyvern]

I have some bird feet a friend gave me, pheasant specifically, and i wanted to dry them in certain poses. They are straight off thebird, bone skin and all, andi want to keep them as such. anyone know how to do this? thanks!

[wyomingtrapper]

Might need to run wire through the toes to hold your shape. A taxidermy supply store would have a liquid preservative that you can inject to dry them out. I'm sure someone in the know will pipe in with some good advice.

[Alex The Hawk]

You open the feet on the bottom with a scalpel or small knife by making a small incision, then you will see something that appears as stringy and white, those are the tendons, take a screw driver and tuck under the white tendons and pull out, the tendons that run through the legs will pop out and will be attached to the fingers, cut the tendons from the finger tendons, you now have removed most of what bugs will eat, prepare some denature alcohol with some boric acid(Found at some pharmacies) if no boric acid is found then buy Savin Dust 10 %,at home depot and mix with the denature, take a syringe with a# 22 needle and inject the feet and the legs, then run a GALVANIZED WIRE, size 12-14 though where you removed the tendons, take a piece of foam, like from an old cooler and run the wire through and back through to the top again, this should stand the legs, separate the fingers and pinned them if necessary in the position you want, and let it it dry a week or two.

After drying if they loose the color you can paint the natural color back or airbrushing is better.
That is it.