A tragedy in California
Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 5:30 am
I read this on facebook... I have two cedar planks that I am going to get rid of. We cooked fish this way alot in the Northwest US, but that was long before I found birdies.
Please please please do not use cedar around your birds. Our hearts go out to this poor family...
Safety Warnings:-
A customer of ours had a tragic accident 2 weeks ago that took the lives of their pet birds. (2, a half moon Conure and an Indian Ringneck) They were preparing dinner, they were making salmon and they put it on a cedar bo...ard and into the oven. Apparently this is how some people prepare salmon, and this cedar board is available anywhere (We didn't know that.) Anyhow, shortly after placing the board in the oven to bake, the one bird, who was on the husbands shoulder, starting to have respiratory problems and started to wobble and fell right off his shoulder. They had no idea of what was happening, it was very sudden, and they rushed the bird to the vet, but it died on the way there. Upon returning, they found the other bird dead in his cage.
In doing some research, the husband found out that cedar is very toxic to birds. We HAD NO CLUE about that! In all our years in birds, we have never heard of such a thing. Now, we did hear that you should not use cedar chips in a birds cage on the bottom, but I didn't realize that was why. If we don't know it, chance are most other people don't either, and we would hate to see this happen to anyone else. This couple is devastated, to say the least. They asked and we offered to post a note of warning about it for other people to read.
We have a listing of Toxic and Non Toxic foods for your birds which can be found here.The other toxic things that we do know of is Teflon, Fabreeze fabric refresher, some types of glue used in laying new carpeting, self cleaning ovens, and in general anything that emits a strong odor. There are lists of plants and woods that are also not recommended or toxic to birds. If anyone else knows of something that is not mentioned here, it would be greatly appreciated if they could tell us and we could add it to the list. We make a point of always telling new people about the toxic things to birds, but this we did not know of, and we feel so bad for them.
Cindy McShane.
Source:www.cbbirds.net