CDC Salmonella and Handwashing Reminder, AGAIN

[K0k0shka]

I wonder how many of those infections involved children and free range chickens. It's easier to contain chicken germs if the chickens themselves are contained, then the kids wash their hands when done with the chickens and go about their business playing in the yard and licking their toys or whatever. But if the chickens have free reign of the whole yard and poop everywhere, there's practically no safe time and place to play in the yard. Little kids are dumb. They will lick everything (I know, I have two of them). That's why the thought of poopy little chicken feet walking all over everything in the yard grosses me out beyond measure. Perching on the lawn furniture... Stepping on the little shovels and buckets and toys... digging in the sand box... Ew! Do you sanitize everything when you have a cookout then? Cookouts are the perfect context for putting fingers in your mouth even for people that don't normally do so. If your chickens use your lawn furniture, and you have cookouts without sanitizing everything, I can totally see how grown adults can get infected without being in the category of people who lick their chickens...

 

[The Moonshiner]

Anyone that worried about chickens contaminating everything shouldn't have chickens.
You really think a backyard is gonna become a problem that it already isn't if you let chickens roam in it?
I have a youngster and have raised a couple others. None of mine ran around licking everything in the yard or licking lawn furniture anyways. But then again I taught them not to stick random sh!t in their mouths and to keep their tongues to themselves.

 

[Painted Calls]

My kids were never lickers either. I have to still remind them to wash hands occasionally, but I've never had to tell them not to lick something. Or put hands in their mouths. They don't do that either.

 

[K0k0shka]

Anyone that worried about chickens contaminating everything shouldn't have chickens.
You really think a backyard is gonna become a problem that it already isn't if you let chickens roam in it?
I have a youngster and have raised a couple others. None of mine ran around licking everything in the yard or licking lawn furniture anyways. But then again I taught them not to stick random sh!t in their mouths and to keep their tongues to themselves.

Just the thought of stepping in or sitting in chicken poop while minding my own business in my own yard is disgusting enough to turn me off from unrestrained free ranging, even if I'm not licking anything. Humans have been raising chickens for a very long time, but inviting them into human spaces like inside their homes or onto their furniture (lawn or otherwise) is a very modern, hipster thing. Even dogs weren't allowed in human spaces like inside the house until fairly recent times, and some people still don't allow them on the bed or on the couch. So the idea of keeping animals away from certain human objects or spaces isn't so new that you should lecture people to not have animals at all if they can't let them roam unrestrained. It's not all or nothing. Not wanting my cat up on my dining room table doesn't mean I can't have a cat in the house. Same with the chickens. There are boundaries, and we can all coexist happily, and wanting boundaries doesn't make you crazy.

P.S. I grew up with animals on a farm so I'm not some germ-obsessed city kid. But even on the farm we had boundaries and didn't live in everpresent chicken filth. If I'd even suggested to folks to let their chickens roam where humans sat and ate, they would've laughed at me.

 

[Painted Calls]

I can imagine that living in a neighborhood and having "urban chickens" would really squeeze those spaces together during free range time. Then again, I'm not sure how you'd keep your chickens on your own property, let alone off your porches if you lived right on top of other people. Keeping urban chickens seems like it would be a lot more challenging all the way around.

 

[Crazy Maizie]

Kids under 4 will lick the chickens if given the chance.

True story!

 

[K0k0shka]

I can imagine that living in a neighborhood and having "urban chickens" would really squeeze those spaces together during free range time. Then again, I'm not sure how you'd keep your chickens on your own property, let alone off your porches if you lived right on top of other people. Keeping urban chickens seems like it would be a lot more challenging all the way around.

There are challenges in both settings. If you're rural and have a lot of land, it can get expensive to fence everything off, and having your chickens in large open unfenced areas means they can wander off into the woods and get eaten by something. But it also means that with more area to roam, they won't necessarily be sitting on your porch swing pooping on the cushions. I think urban folks feel guilty that they don't have that kind of space to offer to their chickens, so they compensate by giving them full access to the whole back yard, where they sit on the table and poop on the porch. This guilt is also fueled by the free range police, who are quick to call any kind of confinement "jail", even a nice roomy run, and insist on the chicken's god-given sacred right to complete freedom. But again, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It's not the open fields of Kansas or a battery cage. There is a happy middle there. Nothing wrong with a nice, well set up fenced run.

 

[Painted Calls]

Mine don't go too far. They stay right around the coop. IMO a roomy run is a must though. Even if you free range. There are plenty of days that mine don't get to go out. During those days, they have plenty of space.

One of my girls started coming up on the porch once. I put a stop to that quickly by squirting her with one of those little cheap squirt guns. Did that on 3 separate occasions and she's never done it since.

 

[The Moonshiner]

There are challenges in both settings. If you're rural and have a lot of land, it can get expensive to fence everything off, and having your chickens in large open unfenced areas means they can wander off into the woods and get eaten by something. But it also means that with more area to roam, they won't necessarily be sitting on your porch swing pooping on the cushions. I think urban folks feel guilty that they don't have that kind of space to offer to their chickens, so they compensate by giving them full access to the whole back yard, where they sit on the table and poop on the porch. This guilt is also fueled by the free range police, who are quick to call any kind of confinement "jail", even a nice roomy run, and insist on the chicken's god-given sacred right to complete freedom. But again, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It's not the open fields of Kansas or a battery cage. There is a happy middle there. Nothing wrong with a nice, well set up fenced run.

Agreed
I have a lot more land then my chickens get to use. I just fenced in the backyard area where the kids play and we cookout and such for my chickens to range on.

 

[K0k0shka]

Agreed
I have a lot more land then my chickens get to use. I just fenced in the backyard area where the kids play and we cookout and such for my chickens to range on.

If I had more space, I'd love to have a free-er area where the chickens and the people could overlap and interact more, but in any case I need to reserve a somewhat clean area for the kids to play in. You can teach them all you want, but some will always be more diligent than others, and even if your own are solid, there's always the question of other people's kids coming to visit and play... Some may be too young to keep their fingers out of their mouths, some may have had different home trainin', and then some parents may not be okay letting their kids play in your yard if a chicken is squatting two feet away from the sand box... (or IN the sand box). Then all you need is one officially filed complaint, and you can have the town breathing down your neck about the chickens and "problems with the community". So I'm just sayin', the matter is more complicated than who licks what...