Why birds, especially? Why not other pets as well? Or kids?
I am not a vet, but I have always understood that birds have sensitive respitory systems as compared to other animals (like the cliche “canary in a coal mine”). After reading a few googled articles, it seems that when you turn on your self cleaning oven, it creates fumes from the resins that come on new ovens as well as other oils that may be present on your dirty oven.
Can you imagine the smell that would give off? Not to mention the amount of smoke…
I have experience with all three methods of oven cleaning (the chemical method, the ‘continuous clean’ method, and the self-cleaning oven method).
The chemical method is the one I have the most experience with – for most of my life I have had standard stoves that needed to be cleaned with chemical oven cleaner. I am not an extraordinarily messy cook but, IME, ovens need to be cleaned at least once and, sometimes, twice, a year. Chemical oven cleaner is expensive – around $5 for Easy-Off right now. Generic stuff can be cheaper, but doesn’t – again, in my experience – work as well. I used dollar store oven cleaner once and it left a film on my oven that was hell to remove. After that, I stuck to brand-name oven cleaners. Cleaning an oven with chemical oven cleaner is extremely messy – oven cleaner turns the grunge inside the oven into a thick, black ooze that needs to be wiped out of the oven with a sponge. The ooze often runs out of the oven, down the outside of the stove, and onto the floor. Chemical oven cleaner also reeks. And, given that you’ve got your head in the oven while you’re wiping it out, you’re up-front-and-personal with the smell. Plus, no matter how carefully I tried to wipe out the ooze, I always missed some someplace and the oven would smell terrible for that first post-cleaning use. Cleaning the oven was absolutely one of my all-time least favorite housewifely chores.
We also rented a house for a couple of years that had a continuous clean oven. Didn’t work very well, IMO. The continuous clean feature didn’t get hot enough to really clean the oven, but I wasn’t allowed to use chemical cleaners (would have voided the warranty). When I had a spill, I ended up trying to chip it clean with a spatula while the oven was hot. If I waited for the oven to cool, then the spill would be too hard to chip out and if I waited for the oven to clean up the spill on its own, then it would take several uses of the oven before it would finally be gone. So, rather than being ‘continuously clean,’ I found my oven was ‘usually dirty.’
I’ve had a self-cleaning oven since we bought this house 3 years ago and it is the only way to go as for as I’m concerned. It does stink up the kitchen a bit – but no more so than the chemical cleaners did. I can set mine to turn itself on with a timer. I always set it to be done first thing in the morning. As soon as the cooling cycle is complete, I open the oven and vacuum out any ashes that were left, then wipe the oven down with a damp sponge. Done. It does use some energy – but using muldoonthief’s figures (which are probably a bit high) it’s still cheaper than buying chemical cleaner at $5.00 a can. And so much esier!
I recently moved into a place that had a Jenn-Air self cleaning gas stove. The owner had the place cleaned by a professional crew, who elected to use Easy Off on the oven. The stove had to be replaced – the oven surface was heavily pitted and the racks no longer fit.