Vinegar as antiseptic?

[JaydeParrot]

Have wondered this for a while, if I get a particularly nasty cut I wash it leave it for a few hours and then use either vinegar or iodine on it, but was wondering what antiseptic to use on my bird if it ever got a cut.

Besides the obvious take to vets if the cut is serious, what is the protocol.

Personally I have a theory that vinegar would be best as it would have less ingredients in it and unlike iodine, is edible, you could apply it to a bird, wait a few seconds and then wash it off with a small amount of water so the bird doesn't ingest it.

Then again, is vinegar poisonus to birds? My male Sennie very occasionally plucks his stomach feathers, I figure if I put vingear on his stomach, the taste might put him off plucking?

[Harpmaker]

Usually the thing to worry about with birds is bleeding to death. I keep styptic powder on hand (Qwikstop)for that reason-poor things don't have much to spare.

Iodine is poison to most animals. Don't put it on your bird.

Some people put vinegar in their bird's water, so it probably won't stop your bird plucking. Since they have orders of magnitude fewer tastebuds than people, they often prefer strong flavors-that's supposed to be why they like chili peppers.

I did find one comment about the danger to parrots of hot vinegar fumes http://www.parrotforums.com/general-parrot-information/29173-question-about-cleaning-vinegar.html , so don't heat it in large amounts, or use it to clean something by dumping a bunch in and heating (coffee maker or dishwasher)

[Wolf]

You can use raw apple cider vinegar in their water or food, don't use the regular apple cider vinegar or the white vinegar. I would doubt it being effective as a deterrent to plucking, but it does have antiseptic properties to it. Also the fumes from hot vinegar are toxic to birds, just like the fumes from Teflon, so don't use hot vinegar anywhere near them or where the fumes could possibly reach them.

[Pajarita]

Vinegar is not really that effective an antiseptic. I use either peroxide to disinfect their boo-boos or something from my country called Espadol which is cloroxilenol because they don't sting at all (vinegar would and would not be as effective). I don't ever use Qwickstop because it burns something terrible when you apply it to a wound. I use cold water or ice (depends on the amount of bleeding) and pressure first and, when the bleeding slows down considerably, I use cornstarch.