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Parrot Beheads Flowers!

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Parrot Beheads Flowers!

Postby JaydeParrot » Thu Jul 03, 2014 3:57 am

Took my Sennie, Cain into a garden a few days ago and sat down in the grass while she walked around the grass (on her harness) looking at the grass and song birds in the trees. As usual Cain at some point got one of her feet caught under the leash part of the harness and stumbled slightly, suddenly angry that she'd been tripped up she attacked the offending object (her harness) and started to chew. She's already wrecked one harness so I quickly stopped her, telling her no, she waited for a minute then started to chew again so I her stopped again, this carried on for a while until she finally left it alone and just stood still giving me a bit of an irritated glare.

She glared at me for a while before tilting her head towards a daisy and snipping the head off with her beak, she looked at me for a reaction. Glad that she was chewing something other than her harness I told her she was a good girl and she continued to walk around, snipping the head off every daisy she could find. After she'd had enough of daisies, I picked her up and took her to find other leaves and flowers to behead.

At least now I know how to stop her chewing,I'll just have to look for a plant for her to behead, :). I'm thinking of making a parrot necklace for her, I'm going to get pieces of parrot safe wood, put a hole in each and and loop a string through the middle, I'll wear it and Cain can chew it while she's on my shoulder :).
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Re: Parrot Beheads Flowers!

Postby Pajarita » Sat Jul 05, 2014 4:18 pm

My dear, please be careful about which plants you allow your bird to put in its beak, daisies are not edible. The leaves are edible in the spring when they first come out but not the flowers.
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Re: Parrot Beheads Flowers!

Postby shiraartain » Sat Jul 05, 2014 4:35 pm

That's so cute! Fajr likes to shred rose petals, so our house always smells nice afterwards :D (no harness yet)
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Re: Parrot Beheads Flowers!

Postby JaydeParrot » Wed Jul 09, 2014 2:14 pm

Cain cuts the daisy heads off like her beak was a pair of scissors, she didn't attempt to eat the daisys, but I do get what you mean, I'll try to keep her away from poisonous plants, :). Any idea if any/all herbs are ok for parrot to chew on?

Using your bird to make natural perfume for the house, sounds like a good idea! :).
Last edited by JaydeParrot on Wed Jul 09, 2014 8:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Parrot Beheads Flowers!

Postby Wolf » Wed Jul 09, 2014 2:58 pm

Greenwing helped me to post a really good list of toxic/ safe items for parrots. It includes such things as trees, plants, woods, foods and household items. You will find it on the second page of this post:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12521

This is the best list that I have run across to date and I have at least 6 of them. I hope that you find it useful.
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Re: Parrot Beheads Flowers!

Postby mrbowlerhat » Wed Jul 09, 2014 5:34 pm

I've never heard of daisies being toxic or not edible. They're on a LOT of edible plants/flowers lists! http://www.landofvos.com/articles/kitchen8.html & http://www.birdchannel.com/bird-magazin ... lower.aspx & http://casadino.com/edible-flowers-for-parrots.html & http://eclectusparrots.net/flowers.html to mention a few. :shock:
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Re: Parrot Beheads Flowers!

Postby Pajarita » Thu Jul 10, 2014 10:17 am

Rule of thumb is that, unless the flower appears on a list as been edible, you don't eat it. Daisies, as far as I know, do not appear to be edible - and the other problem is that we call a large number of flowers 'daisies' when, in reality, they belong to all different species and just share the same shape. Sometimes you see the English Daisy on lists of plants you can forage for but, when they do, it usually specifies that it's the very young leaves in the early spring that are OK to eat and nothing else. Poison Control has them as super astringent, causing numbness of the lips and mouth and irritation to the throat with possible nausea and vomiting so, although they might not be fatal, there is something there that is not good...
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Re: Parrot Beheads Flowers!

Postby mrbowlerhat » Thu Jul 10, 2014 7:12 pm

Pajarita wrote:Rule of thumb is that, unless the flower appears on a list as been edible, you don't eat it.
But like I just said, daisies do. Quite a lot of those lists, too!
I have no idea what kind of daisies you have, but we eat ours (bellis perennis) now and then. Without any numbness, irritation or nausea. Obviously, or I don't think anyone would make daisy-based desserts.
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I also know of a lot of people who feed them to their birds. Bellis perennis seems quite safe to me.
After some googling, the only thing I found on numbness or nausea caused by daisies seems to be about feverfew (tanacetum parthenium), which apparently is sometimes known as the "midsummer daisy".
I only find bellis perennis (AKA the English daisy) on lists of edible flowers, and there seems to be no trace at all of the whole deal with young leaves in early spring. :?: Literally the only negative thing I've found about them is that they have a kind of bitter taste. :P

Do you have a source, or ... Anything other than your word, that you can share about this?
Sorry, I obviously don't mean to be rude or anything, I just feel like if our daisies in fact aren't edible after all, I would really want to know everything about it! :)
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Re: Parrot Beheads Flowers!

Postby Pajarita » Fri Jul 11, 2014 10:08 am

The one you mention (Bellis perennis) is the English daisy, the one I said that the early leaves are edible although they turn quite astringent as the season progresses.

This from Wikipedia
"This daisy may be used as a potherb. Young leaves can be eaten raw in salads[12] or cooked, noting that the leaves become increasingly astringent with age.[6] Flower buds and petals can be eaten raw in sandwiches, soups and salads."
Notice that they say 'petals and buds' and not stalks (also not centers).

This from the herbal section:
"Bellis perennis has astringent properties and has been used in herbal medicine.[13] In ancient Rome, the surgeons who accompanied Roman legions into battle would order their slaves to pick sacks full of daisies in order to extract their juice, hence the origin of this plant's scientific name in Latin. Bandages were soaked in this juice and would then be used to bind sword and spear cuts."

Link classifying it as non-edible: http://crescentbloom.com/Plants/Specime ... rennis.htm

Wikipedia link to a concern with the list of edible flowers which specifically mentions it as iffy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_ ... le_flowers

Link to Cornell's Dept of Animal Science on plants that are not good for animals to eat (this one is on saponins which have an anti-nutritional effect) which lists daisies as one of the plants that should not be fed to them: http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/tox ... ponin.html

University of California list of toxic plants which has it: http://ucanr.edu/sites/poisonous_safe_p ... _Name_685/
(the 'dermatitis' is the result of the same irritant that numbs mucosa)

And another one that lists it with the nausea and vomiting effect (although my original reference was from a mother who had called Poison Control to ask about it because her daughter had been chewing on a daisy stem):http://healthyhomegardening.com/Blog.php?pid=112&q=Poisons%20and%20Treatments

When I do research on food for my animals, I go through several pages of it and word it in different ways in the search engine because, as I've said before, I am the kind of person that believes in "Better safe than sorry" and "When in doubt, don't do it" so, if I find a couple of references that say 'Don't' that's good enough for me.
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