baking wood- help

[noodles123]

If baking natural wood (maple) branches for a tree perch:


1. Can I do this in my home oven with the bird in the house/nearby?


2. What temperature should the oven be set to?


3. How long do I bake the wood?

 

[itzjbean]

Yes, you can do this in your own oven with your bird in your house.

I have heard 200 degrees for 1 hour, or 250 degrees for 45 minutes.

 

[noodles123]

Thanks!

Do I need to strip the bark if I am baking them?

 

[EllenD]

No, you can keep the bark right on the branches.

 

[noodles123]

Even on a Maple?

I head that the bark needed to come off to remove a fungal risk factor (specific to Maple trees), but will baking do the trick instead?

 

[LordTriggs]

cooking at 200C will kill off any harmful bacteria pretty quick, think of how dangerous raw chicken is for humans with bacteria but a good cooking removes all that risk

 

[noodles123]

True- I was just more worried about things that heat doesn't kill---not that this would be an issue in wood, but just as an example from cooking, Botulism. If you heat that up, it doesn't change the toxin's presence. That was why I didn't know if baking would do the trick with regard to certain fungi on the bark.

 

[EllenD]

I used to build all types of perches/stand/gyms, from both branches and from PVC, and sold them online on Etsy, eBay, Craiglist, etc. I did this for years and made a pretty good living doing so on the side. I live in central Pennsylvania, so I don't have access to wood branches such as Manzanita unfortunately, so I gathered all types of Maple, Oak, Birch, Pear, Apple, Grape Vine, etc. And I left the bark on all of them, simply because the birds typically love to spend hours and hours shredding the bark off themselves.

There's nothing that won't be killed by pre-heating your oven to 250 degrees F and baking the branches for 30-45 minutes, placing the branches directly on the oven rack. This heats the branches the entire way through, and will kill all parasites, bacteria, fungi, etc. This is the way that the commercial companies who mass-produce natural branch perches do it, except they use huge, industrial ovens.

 

[noodles123]

Thank you Ellen--
The tree I am using was probably about 10-15 feet from a side street (30 mph, but decent amount of traffic due to a school nearby and a traffic light about 50 feet ahead).
Spray was likely used on mulch around the base of the tree to kill weeds.
Salt is used on the roads during winter here, but there is a concrete a run-off ditch very nearby---for the majority of the road, the grass and asphault are separated by a large ditch + a hill, but it starts down the road a bit from where I am got my branches.


The branches I took were from about 10 feet off the ground, but should I be worried about the tree having absorbed chemicals? These branches are PERFECT and I know the branch itself wasn't sprayed with anything directly....at least not that anyone knows of in the past 10 years.