Risks to Human Children?

[bantymum]

I once caught "chlamydia pneumonia "and my Dr said
"how did you get that" he doesnt see it often.
I was pretty ill and didnt even take a day off work,
I kicked it after 2 rounds of tabs.
I think I caught it from cleaning out the coop without a mask. I therefore always wear a mask now and only clean it out on mild days with no wind. , and I dont stir up the dust too much.
Just a word of caution to everyone, as aran said always wera a dust mask.

 

[Rosalind]

I used to work with Chlamydia psittaci (grad student at an ag. university). It is indeed nasty stuff, however the majority of cases from agricultural sources pick it up from pigeons. Wild pigeons infected with C. psittaci tend to hang around feed silos and eat whatever spills out, then they hang around the cattle troughs and poop all over the cattle feed. The cattle get infected and miscarry the calves as a result. As aran pointed out, humans mostly get sick from it when they are immunocompromised.

You've got a much higher chance of getting the, uh, other kind of Chlamydia from people than you have a chance of getting psittacosis from a chicken. And if you live in a major city, chances are you've been infected with Chlamydia pneumoniae yourself, and never knew it--most people get cold-like symptoms from C. pneumoniae, or get bronchitis at the very worst.

 

[blue90292]

the disease is probably not known or widely reported because doctors don't know about it.

my son (he's 5) is a pretty strong kid when it comes to the immune system. when he was born, we had 4 dogs, 2 cats, 2 horses and 2 bulls. now we have almost 100 chickens added to that.

he rarely gets sick, and i'm not afraid of him touching the chickens but i do make him wash his hands immediately AND change clothes after messing with the chickens. i wouldn't be that overly cautious if i only had a trio or maybe half a dozen. but we have alot and that's alot of poo.

he didn't listen to me one afternoon when i was cleaning out the coops and got in the mud by the coops. that evening he had diarehea like he'd never had it before and within 6 hours, had blood in his stool. i took him to the doctors that morning and they wouldn't give him anything because they didn't know if it was viral or bacterial. i could care less, i just wanted him to get something but they said no, not until the test results come back in.

the test results finally came back 4 days later and it came back inconclusive. so the doctor STILL wouldn't give him anything. by the 4th day, he was doing much better so i didn't fight it, but it was quite scary.

he went to school fine and ate fine all those 4 days. but now, he listens to me when i tell him to change clothes and wash his hands and NO PLAYING IN THE MUD.

not trying to scare you. just take proper precautions and you'll be fine. like i said, we have almost 100 chickens and he's fine and he runs around our property bare footed.

 

[ozark hen]

Blue, I don't know if this would apply to your son's situation but....when my DH got an intestinal viral thing, the dr. couldn't give him any meds due to it being a viral thing BUT she did recommend yogurt with active cultures. It sure worked on the severe diarrhea. Now I am not saying it is a cure for whatever but it sure could help with symptoms to help the victim through whatever he/she is going through?

 

[hisbride]

I'm glad someone else posted about changing clothes. I am a self diagnosed OCD. I can get in the coop and clean it out (I need to get a mask-I used a hankerchief) but when I leave I strip at the laundry room and make a bee line carefully to the shower. I make sure my husband's routine is to shower after foolin' around in the coop. I'm sorry but that dust flies around and I won't want it on me or in my house. When my son holds a chicken he knows he is deemed thilthy and must do mommy's routine.

but usually he finished playing outside and gets a warning to keep his hands out of his eyes and mouth til he comes in.

We've had chickens for about 5 years and no one has gotten sick with our routine. Well not physically. I am sure they get annoyed at me but whatever.