Baby chicks adorably scratching up my arm

[spuddenly]

I have several 2-3 week old chicks that are now friendly enough to hop onto my hands and arms and perch/roost there. 2 of them also enjoy walking up and down my forearm like a jungle gym. Unfortunately I hadn't realized how sharp their claws would be and I now have a bunch of red scratches on my arms and a few on my hand. Not super painful, and I like that they're friendly enough with me to explore, but I would like to get fewer scratches if possible lol.

Is there any way around this? Not sure if I should be clipping their claws or filing them down. Unfortunately they're on mostly sawdust and the surface under their sawdust isn't hard enough to naturally wear down their claws (shower curtain over carpet, they're in our spare room). They do have a wooden roosting bar but that's fairly smooth. Should I try sticking some larger & rougher branches in there to get them to roost/scratch on that? Or just always wear long sleeves when handling the chicks?

EDIT: Added a few chick tax photos.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I'm in the same boat. One of my boys actually had a nail tip so fine it broke off. Just wear long sleeves. When they're a little older, you can throw in a cinder block or some stones for them to play on. That will help

 

[spuddenly]

Haha, good to know I'm not the only one suffering. Stones/cinderblocks sound like a great idea in a few weeks. I was also considering stopping by PetCo tomorrow to grab a small corrugated cardboard cat scratcher and putting their feeder on top of it - they particularly love digging by their feeder so hoping that wears down their claws a bit more.

 

[K0k0shka]

Long sleeves. Problem solved.

 

[SammyJo425]

Haha, good to know I'm not the only one suffering. Stones/cinderblocks sound like a great idea in a few weeks. I was also considering stopping by PetCo tomorrow to grab a small corrugated cardboard cat scratcher and putting their feeder on top of it - they particularly love digging by their feeder so hoping that wears down their claws a bit more.

I wonder if a sheet of fine sandpaper could do the same? mine are 3 weeks old and feathering out and extremely curious. So they fight over the opportunity to jump on my arm and climb up lol

 

[spuddenly]

Definitely could work, they're likely to poop all over it though if you're fine sacrificing it I ended up wearing thicker long-sleeved jackets for my future chick batches just due to time of year and temperature, so that solved that problem for me. Their nails rounded out as they got older.