Poppy Seeds and Parakeets

User Question
our 1 yr. old parakeet died suddenly. the only unusual event was that it ate a few poppy seed (pie filling from a can). I couldn't find that on your list of poisonous foods. could that have killed our pet?

Lisa's Answer
I'm sorry to hear about your pet!

Actually poppy seeds are often a component in regular bird seed mix, from what I can tell. Poppy seeds are of course used on human food too, as a decoration mostly.

Just FYI opium comes from poppy heads before they're ripened, and there are stories of people who eat a lot of poppy seeds then showing up positive on a drug test as an opium user :) But that's a flaw of the test - there is no narcotic whatsoever in the SEED of the poppy plant.

So I really don't think it was the seeds that did it. I'd check the house for teflon pans, or other cleaners you might have been using at the time. Or it could just be that the bird got sick somehow ...

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