Holiday Safety for Your Companion Bird
Holiday Food and Kitchen Safety for Parrots and Softbills - Part Three
Guests mean snackies and the opportunity to wow your friends and families with cool new recipes. If you have an inquisitive parrot you may wish to stick to recipes that have all bird safe ingredients. Is there such a thing? Of course! Preparing food that pleases our family and guests and that is safe for our curious feathered friends means only a few minor adjustments.
Before you start planning, shopping and cooking, here are the key toxic foods that birds should not eat in any form (part of a recipe or as is):
- Avocado
- Chocolate
- Caffeine
- Alcohol
So champagne and chocolate truffles are definitely out if your parrot can get to them! The key is not leaving hazardous foods in the open with unattended birds. And guests must be clear on the house rule: no-one feeds the birds without your permission and presence.
Here are other are other topics to be aware of for companion bird safety:
Cooking
- The holiday season is the best time of year to get in the habit of cooking without your constant companion bird. The chances of injury are much higher with the increased activity in the kitchen preparing all those yummy goodies for your family and friends.
- Watch out for that inquisitive bird who may fly or jump right in the middle of what you are doing, whether it be simmering sauce, sautéing scallions, or sieving spaghetti for an evening meal. Hot dishes, cooking pots and utensils, and hot foods present very real high risk burn hazards.
- Be careful of the type of cookware you use. Non-stick coatings, when heated, are very toxic to birds.
- Keep all hot foods covered with a lid. This prevents beak marks in the buns before they go on the table and prevents those beaks from getting into foods with potentially harmful ingredients and hot dishes with burn potential.
Fumes
Cooking pots and counter top appliances are two obvious sources of hazardous fumes.
Also consider:
- Self-cleaning oven fumes - highly toxic to birds - if you don't want your bird inhaling them do you want to?
- Candles, incense, carpet fresheners, air fresheners, and room deodorizers - all contain one or both of scent oils and propellants that are very dangerous to the fragile respiration system of your bird.
- Cigarette, marijuana, pipe and cigar smoke - if second-hand smoke is bad for people, it's worse for your birds.
- Microwave popcorn fumes - highly dangerous to the avian respiratory system.
If you want a festive spicy scent in the air for a gathering, consider a small simmering pot with herbs or spices such as rosemary, mint, lemon balm, cloves, whole allspice, or cinnamon stick. These are safe aromatic ingredients that can be simmered individually or in various combinations with lemon and or orange slices.
CAUTION: When using this method and these ingredients, be sure to keep an eye on the water level so the pot does not cook dry and burn. Automatic simmering pots for this purpose can be purchased in stores or online.
Kitchen Safety
Keep all drawers and cupboard and appliance doors closed at all times! Birds are very curious and if in nesting mode will gladly investigate open doors, drawers and anything else that looks cozy. Drawers may have sharp and pointy knives and utensils. Cupboards may have heavy, unstable stacks of food and cooking supplies or containers, bowls, pots and pans that can shift or tip.
If your bird is in the kitchen with you during food preparation, always be aware of its whereabouts. But for hygiene and safety reasons, it's a good idea to keep your bird(s) out of the kitchen while preparing meals at all times of the year.
True Story: My beloved kakariki, Jade, rest her dear little soul, scared the "you know what", out of me and my family one year. I had my parents in from Salmon, Arm, BC and my brother and his two sons from Calgary and Stone Plain, Alberta, respectively. Jade had diabetes and thus she was highly water dependent. She was also a female, hormonal, nesty little thing who loved dark corners and hidey holes.
It was Christmas Eve and we were sitting around watching a movie when I realized I hadn't seen Jade for some time. The panic alarm was up and everyone was looking for Jade. I figured it had been at least a half hour since anyone had seen her.
We started the hunt. After 10 minutes of looking and calling, I thought that maybe she had gotten into an opened drawer and was shut in. Sure enough, I found her, weak and dehydrated in the bottom of the drawer unit in the kitchen.
Thankfully I worked, and still do, in a veterinary clinic for birds only and knew what to do for Jade; she had gone into diabetic shock before. This was very scary for all involved. My Mom got a crash course on how to hold a parrot steady for injections.
What started as a simple list of holiday hazards has turned out to be a multi-part series! In the next article, we'll cover first aid for birds and a few other hazards that didn't fall neatly into the first three parts.