Are Backyard Chickens Safe for Kids?

I’m wondering if you can help put in perspective the illness risk to kids (under and over 5) of backyard chickens. Does it matter if the chickens are kept in a run vs. being allowed free range of the yard sometimes? Salmonella, E. coli, etc. are concerns, but how concerning compared with other daily risk-taking?

—Anonymous

The core concern with backyard chickens (other than that they might annoy the neighbors and they smell bad) is that they can carry various diseases. This study, from about a decade ago in Finland, tried to calculate the share of backyard poultry that harbored various bacteria. The researchers found that about half of the chickens had a strain of campylobacter, which can make people sick, and about a third were carrying listeria (although they questioned whether the birds carried it in a way that could harm humans).

The other common issue cited is salmonella. This study in Vermont found salmonella in 20% of backyard flocks, although another in Massachusetts found only 2%.

In principle, these present health risks. In practice, there is little direct evidence that many people get these illnesses from backyard chickens. Common sense dictates that you wash your hands after being around chickens, but I do not see anything in the data that would suggest this is a major concern.

There are, however, two other things to note. First, chickens are susceptible to bird flu, which they could get from wild birds. Although it’s not that easy for people to get bird flu from chickens, it could happen. If you have backyard chickens and they are sick, this is a time to use PPE and try to be cautious and figure out what is going on.

The second issue is that backyard chicken eggs can be a source of lead exposure for children. Especially in urban areas, soil can have a significant amount of lead (a relic of the days of lead gasoline, among other things). Chickens that peck around in soil can therefore produce eggs with high lead levels. So if you are in a city and eating a lot of your chickens’ eggs, it is worth having them tested.

Other than all that, enjoy!