Can Keeping Backyard Chickens Kill you??

[farmgirl02]

My sister has Asthma and we have been caring for our chickens for a long time. She is fine, and it as not affected any of my family or my friends. If chickens could kill you, than she probably would not be around right now!

~farmgirl~

 

[NinjaRooster]

Can chickens kill you? Probably, but so can driving a car.

And I'm gonna guess that you probably don't think twice about heading down to the store for a bag of feed.

That being said, a coop in one's backyard is going to be much cleaner that one of tyson's.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

There doesn't seem to be any lack of ventilation or fresh air in this commercial chicken house.

I think that some of us have been sold a bill of good otherwise known as being taken on an old fashion snipe hunt.



Not to make too much of the issue but I wonder if any of the hens housed in this poultry house suffered any frost bite recently?

There is more than one side to any issue but I will put the cleanliness of any well managed intergraded commercial poultry operation up against any 10 back yard flocks that I come across and the commercial operation will come away with a cleaner bill of health meaning fewer diseases almost every time.

http://www.wattagnet.com/EPA_still_trying_to_link_poultry_feathers,_dust_to_nutrient_discharge_issue.html

How many of you could pass the EPA's rules and regulations on storm water run off? From the posts I read about muddy coops and runs I bet not one in a hundred. The only thing in your favor so far is that your coop, run, and poultry pasture is to small for the EPA to bother with, that is until the EPA gets all the big boys rounded up, branded, nose ringed, and castrated. Someone yesterday in another thread rued the fact that the government holds back small farmers and keeps them from selling uninspected or raw food to the public. Well now you see how the scam works. The small poultry farmer is unable to carry or service the debt load that complying with the reams of regulation would cost him. Then when faced with the decision of whether to fix his daughters teeth, get his wife an operation that may save her life, or whether to send his son to college, the farm gets sold.

The whole purpose of the over flight in the above link was not to enforce environmental law, but to find an excuse for a 100% private law firm to file suit in Federal Court and force the defendant to either sign a consent decree and pay out a few million dollars or else borrow and spend mega millions of dollars on outside legal help and fight the trumped up charges for maybe decades.

 

[ChickenCurt]

I'd take that challenge.
Also, all the fans on the planet won't fix the over crowded conditions in these buildings that are necessary just to keep ammonia levels down. Commercial birds live in very poor conditions and my coops at their dirtiest (late winter/early spring) is cleaner. My birds get fresh straw added daily (as do many I have read here) not left to stand or lie in their own excrement, the runs become gardens every year where as the scrapping off of a commercial building are too toxic to grow much of anything, my birds actually free range vs. having a small door opened and being told they're free ranging though few if any of the 1000's of birds ever leave the building, my egg layers have nesting boxes that are shared at will not forced to live crammed 4-6 in a 12x16 cage. Shall we continue? None of my neighbors can smell my property and no commercial producer I've encountered can truthfully state that.
But I'll digress, the EPA may shut us small flock owners down being that our birds tend to mingle with wildlife, poo in the grass, eat bugs and other pests, lay beautiful eggs that have firm upright yolks and non runny white that whip into meringue perfectly, tasty meat that lacks hormones, antibiotics and supplements...

 

[Kuntry Klucker]

Can chickens kill you? Probably, but so can driving a car.

And I'm gonna guess that you probably don't think twice about heading down to the store for a bag of feed.

That being said, a coop in one's backyard is going to be much cleaner that one of tyson's.

That is true, driving a car is more deadly then keeping a small backyard flock of chickens.
I admit that my coop toward the end of winter tends to get a little dirtily. It is cold, usually wet or
snowing so weather conditions for a good coop cleaning are just not presenting themselves.

But even in those conditions, you are right, my coop is much cleaner than Tyson's for sure.
My birds get to run around free ranging and do all the other natural activities that chickens love.

Thanks for your post.

 

[GD91]

Even if you didn't clean your coop out for a fortnight or maybe even a month, you still wouldn't get sick. Nor would your birds. Thats not to say you should leave it that long lol, but I noticed your layout is open air on dry soil. Bacteria does not thrive at all in those conditions, unlike the musty, damp, cramped humid closed barns where a thousand commercial birds are kept amongst the dead & dying.

There is absolutely no way anybody could compare that with a small backyard flock kept in far healthier conditions. Why are you worrying about dust? You coop has excellent ventilation, any chicken dust will just float away.

I would not worry at all about such scare - mongering, just keep conditions dry & well ventilated & you probably will find your birds are much healthier for it.

 

[earlybird10842]

I really wouldn't worry. Keep the coop clean and quarantine new birds, and you should be fine. People on farms have kept chickens for hundreds of years, and we would have stopped before now if there was a health hazard.

 

[Kuntry Klucker]

Even if you didn't clean your coop out for a fortnight or maybe even a month, you still wouldn't get sick. Nor would your birds. Thats not to say you should leave it that long lol, but I noticed your layout is open air on dry soil. Bacteria does not thrive at all in those conditions, unlike the musty, damp, cramped humid closed barns where a thousand commercial birds are kept amongst the dead & dying.

There is absolutely no way anybody could compare that with a small backyard flock kept in far healthier conditions. Why are you worrying about dust? You coop has excellent ventilation, any chicken dust will just float away.

I would not worry at all about such scare - mongering, just keep conditions dry & well ventilated & you probably will find your birds are much healthier for it.

thank you so much, my coop is well ventilated, they get plant of fresh air and free ranging time on top of it all. I do tend to not clean my coop
in winter mainly because weather is often bad and I cannot get out there do to a full cleaning. I do however add fresh shaving once a month or so
and mix it in with the old shaving to keep things dry and smelling fresh.

thanks again for your post.

 

[Kuntry Klucker]

I really wouldn't worry. Keep the coop clean and quarantine new birds, and you should be fine. People on farms have kept chickens for hundreds of years, and we would have stopped before now if there was a health hazard.

That is true, people long ago had chickens and a am sure they did not have the nice coop set ups that are available now.

 

[enola]

I would like to ask a question......... and please be honest.

How many of you (that are stating all of these facts about how filthy commercial chickens are) have ever even been inside of a commercial breeder/layer house?