Heated Vinegar Around Companion Birds

* Update on the safety or not, of Vinegar around Companion Birds 09-13-2014 *

There have been several recent threads, on the forums and internet, with some going back a few years, concerning the use of vinegar (acetic acid) around our feathered friends and as of the above date, I offer this information as being the most current, up-to-date, on the topic.

First, a little background, my background is engineering, construction type and computer science…all the way back to the ‘60s, when Bill Gates was still in high school and some 10 years before Microsoft’s big brother, back when the likes of IBM & Univac were designing & building warehouse size computers…fast forward a few years and somewhere along the way I ended up buying a 12yo girl a 3mo MBC for her birthday and got Buddy back when he was 19yo…he lived another 10 years, but along the way, I ran into a lot of truths, lies, supositions & innuendos (the internet is still rife with those) about bird care, trying to build my own database on the several birds that came after Buddy…it’s a hobby for me, as is custom building dollhouses and dabbling in writing, to know what is & what’s not right, so if I post to a thread/topic, I try to have credible, verifiable data to support and/or back up my posts, I've not always posted the best information, so this post is an attempt at atonement for my recent postings about vinegar and its possible dangers to our feathered friends…though it may take me longer than some, I can see the forest for the trees and the error of my ways (most of the time).

So, back to vinegar and birds, as I mentioned earlier, the question of vinegar being harmful to birds, has popped up in the forums here and on those of competitors, over the years and have been addressed by mostly anecdotal and supposition answers http://www.parrotforums.com/quakers/7100-quakers-vinegar.html (in this thread a poster noted that when vinegar is used, their dogs go outside, of their own volition) but has never been addressed, at least not that I could find, by someone credentialed in chemistry, until I ran across a blogger whom I’d never heard of before Information about Ann Castro | Caring for Parrots | Parrot Behavior | The Bird School by Ann Castro

In tracking down the origin of the various internet postings about the toxicity of vinegar to birds, I found these:

Vinegar: A Natural Approach to Avian Management

Karen's Blog: Is vinegar dangerous?
Full text of "Medicine chests carefully prepared for all climates : with directions for using the medicines, and treatment of diseases incident to seamen"
https://archive.org/details/61640130R.nlm.nih.gov


I also read this blog: Vinegar & Bird Health | Haith's® PRO

So, while through the personal experience of finding it hard to breathe, in an area where vinegar has been brought to boil (no scientific studies involved), I still believe that vinegar could very well have been part and parcel to the deaths of those exposed birds.

You are invited to conduct your own test, by closing off your kitchen as much as possible, boiling (full boil) a quart of vinegar for 10-15 minutes, that should approximate the canning of 7 quarts of pickles…..we don’t have information as to how much of what percentage of acetic acid was heated in the bird death scenario, but if dogs are leaving the house, why shouldn’t our feathered friends have the same option…ie. Why take the chance in the first place?


The information about the loss of the birds to vinegar in a dishwasher was traced back to at least 2006, but could be older!

Great info, Weco! Thanks for sharing. No more cooking adobo for me (it's a pork stew with equal parts vinegar and soy sauce).

Follow up question from me: Is distilled white vinegar safe as a cleaning agent? I use liberal amounts of vinegar + water solution on Boomer's cage and all around the house, have been 2.5 years now with no issues. I don't use it with a steamer. I just wipe down his cage with it. What do you think?

BoomBoom said:

Great info, Weco! Thanks for sharing. No more cooking adobo for me (it's a pork stew with equal parts vinegar and soy sauce).

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Hm, last place we lived Don would use vinegar a lot in dishes he'd cook. He'd boil it with the stove on HIGH (one of those guys who think the stove has 2 settings... High, and off :49 lol. Robin's cage used to be pretty close to the kitchen area. :11: it was never straight vinegar, it had other ingredients.

BoomBoom said:

Great info, Weco! Thanks for sharing. No more cooking adobo for me (it's a pork stew with equal parts vinegar and soy sauce).

Follow up question from me: Is distilled white vinegar safe as a cleaning agent? I use liberal amounts of vinegar + water solution on Boomer's cage and all around the house, have been 2.5 years now with no issues. I don't use it with a steamer. I just wipe down his cage with it. What do you think?

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Actually BoomBoom, there's a couple of questions here.....and I'm pretty sure there's a work-around that would let you still cook adobo.....had eaten it, but didn't know how it was cooked, so looked it up.....that's a lot of salt, but if you have an exhaust fan over your stove, unless it is a non-ducted recirculating type fan/hood, you should be OK.....as long as your kitchen vent hood ducts the exhaust to the outside, there should be enough air transfer to be safe & allow you to create your culinary delight.....maybe it's a case of just changing out the exhaust fan, they make replacement fans that will transfer (exhaust) air from 100 CFM (cubic feet per minute) up to 1500 CFM, but it maybe that your exhaust fan needs to be replaced or at least checked for safety...bet you've never had that done, have you? Simply installing a larger CFM fan may not be a good trade, because larger also can mean nosier...do your research...and that doesn't necessarily mean asking that smiling (or not) sales associate at your home improvement store.....

If you don't have a vent to the outside, but you do have a kitchen window that opens, get a window vent fan, even if you have crank-out windows, there are workable solutions...sometimes you just have to think-out-of-the-box...it also helps to know what you have to work with! Just don't turn on your bathroom exhaust fan & drag the offensive odors throughout the house, unless of course, your house is designed in such a way that that would be a good alternative, common sense is always a good virtue!

Although vinegar (acetic acid) is offensive to a lot of us, I have yet to run across/read anything about it being dangerous right out of the bottle, however, I am not so sure I would go spraying down all the walls in the house at one time...I'd need some fresh air in there somewhere, but washing down cages with vinegar...with the bird(s) somewhere else, shouldn't be a problem.....

RavensGryf said:

Hm, last place we lived Don would use vinegar a lot in dishes he'd cook. He'd boil it with the stove on HIGH (one of those guys who think the stove has 2 settings... High, and off :49 lol. Robin's cage used to be pretty close to the kitchen area. :11: it was never straight vinegar, it had other ingredients.

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RG, that sounds like one of those domestic dispute problems, I know I'm not qualified to comment there, even tongue-in-cheek...though with the variance & longevity of the many experiences in these forums, someone else may have a solution.....I ended up with less than passing grades in my two attempts.....