Self Cleaning Oven Killed my 2 Parakeets

User Question
I had two parakeets that I have kept in my kitchen for six months. I woke up this morning and all seemed fine until my five year old told me one looked sick. Within seconds, he died. A minute or two later, the other one staggered on the floor and also died. The only thing I did differently this morning was to turn on the self-cleaning oven. Do you think this did it as their deaths happened to suddently and one after the other. I had heard of no teflon cooking but never thought about the self-cleaning over. Please respond since my daughter is beyond sad and I really do want to get her new parakeets. Thank you. (your site was tremendously helpful. Thank you)

Lisa's Answer
Yikes I am SO so sorry to hear that. Yes, self cleaning ovens in essence heat up to very high temperatures and burn off the crud in the oven so it creates the same sort of toxic fumes as heating up teflon does. I think the manuals for most ovens say to keep all doors and windows open while you clean the oven and to keep small children out of the area. Parakeets have even smaller bodies than small children do, so they are even more sensitive to the toxic odors that are generated.

Whenever you do something that could generate unhealthy fumes (most cleaning sprays fall into this category too) it's important to move the parakeets out of the room and to keep the room well aerated. It only takes a tiny amount of something bad to get into the parakeet's lungs and really harm its tiny system. Even cigarette smoke can fall into this category.

I'm very sorry that she is so sad!! Give a proper send-off to the two poor little parakeets, and then after a day or two see if she'd be interested in getting some new keets. Let her go and choose them with you and hopefully the new keets will bring her just as much pleasure as the original ones did. Now that you both are more skilled with how to train parakeets, maybe the new ones will be even better at sitting on your finger and even talking!

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