Are acorns safe?

Manni seems to like eating the little green acorns that fall off the trees. He typically eats the green part and spits out the rest. I try not to let him eat too many, and I've been wondering if they're safe or not. So far they don't seem to have caused any visible problems.

I looked around on the internet but didn't find anything definitive. Anyone know?

I know in the book My Side of the Mountain, it claims you have to cook acorns before eating, but I don't know if that's because of flavor or toxicity.

I found a site that claims they can cause severe diarrhea.

www.devoschildrens.org/ContentStore/pets_n_poisons.pdf

Apparentlhy the toxic agents are tannins, which are also found in tea.

Ah, nice find!

Guess no more acorns for Manni!

I wouldn't really consider tannins a toxin in the sense we normally think about them. They're the things that make tea tea colored and tropical rivers tea colored (and the Pine Barren rivers tea colored in NJ).

The only accounts I can find are in Cattle, which I assume can eat many more than a dog. Deer, while different from cattle and dogs, eat them by the ton in the fall. It seems that Humans have clear symptoms before anything really dangerous happens.

At work last Friday, we rectally removed an acorn from a dog who had been vomiting and having diarrhea for a couple days... X-rays showed nothing else internally, just a lot of gas in the bowels. I would keep my dog away from acorns if they were common around here!

Don't know, but we have over 50 oak trees and our entire lawn gets full of acorns.

Acorns are toxic

Acorns are so toxic deer love to eat them. LOL.

Friend of mine has a Beagle that eats them constantly. He's fine, but FAT...acorns are very very fattening, which is why deer etc like them...they help build up winter stores of fat. She had to limit his access because he wasn't losing weight and it was due to the acorns.

I personally would not freak if my dog ate the occasional acorn.

Acorns can be toxic to dogs hehe

Its a mild toxin.. but non the less a toxin that can cause loose stools and vomitting..

Also if they eat enough - it can cause some expensive surgeries for removal hehe

I was wondering this yesterday. While at the park Daisy managed to eat a couple of acorns (brown, not green) and then today she had a tiny bit of soft stool. I wonder if that's what caused it. Either that or the sunflower butter I put in her kong (we don't use peanut butter here).

I have the same problem with pine cones. I worry she is going to eat them. I have them everywhere on my land.

Oh geez, pine cones? I have them in my yard too, but if i happen to miss one while cleaning up the yard, my dogs are all over it. Then I have to chase them down to get it. LOL.

My dog Mary ate them and she lived to an old age. I never let her have too many however. I remember reading once that the indians boiled them to remove something, I think it was a bitter taste and then pounded them into a flour. THat is about all I know about them. Mary targeted elm leaves, which she ate by the mouthful, I figured it was for the aspirin and would leave a few saplings in the yard which she kept trimmed to bushes. SHe loved certain grasses and was crazy over wild raspberries and my blackberries so I figured she knew what she was doing.

lol it makes me happy when I remember something right from a long time ago, I think I read that when I was a little kid. I found this.

it was tanic acid that has to be removed to make them tasty.
Natural Area News - Acorns

Acorns are not listed on the Animal Poison Control website. There is one page on the ASPCA site.

ASPCA | Acorn

Sounds like the major problem might be the pieces. Looked up gallotanins (since had no idea what "toxic principle" means - think it is probably meaningless). Gallotannins are a large class of compounds found in many foods. They have antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, they also bind to some proteins and other nutrients, so in large amounts may affect nutrition.

My friend took her dog to the vet because he was throwing up yellow bile an not eating. Her husband remembers the dog looks at possibly acorns on the ground. The vet said that if he was a small dog, it would be worse. Acorns, even drinking the water from where the oak leaves were, can be toxic on the kidneys.

Good thing Mary was a big dog because she drank out of creeks and we have a great deal of oak trees here.