can humans get infected by chicken diseases?

[vangela]

I wonder, pamering and taking care of a very sick chicken now getting better, is it safe for humans to be exposed and in my case having this chicken in my house. she suffered from botulism we think but it also looked a lot like Marek's because of her paralysis.
anybody with some good advise.? I know avian flue is one but are there others and what precaucions to take. My chicken is realy affectioned and i have been always very close to her and still am. Another chicken ones had trouble breathing and I tried to help her by blowing my air into her nostrils.
please don't laugh, i love to safe them if possible.

 

[silkiechicken]

There aren't really that many things that can directly infect you. Even the avian flu was spread mostly human to human, it was just a few cases of chicken to human that started the human to human spread.

When taking care of a sick bird, just wash your hands and use common sense when it comes to an infection, such as not touching any pus filled wounds with your bare hands if you have a cut on your finger. Bacteria like staph don't care what you are, as long as it can survive. Viral issues on the other hand, are 99.99% species specific as they need to contact host specific receptors to "match" and do their cellular hijacking.

 

[bargain]

Agreed with hand washing. ALso if you run heating and air conditioning and have someone with asthma or other respiratory issues in the house, this may aggravate their lungs..... Because I have severe asthma, hubby allows no birds in the house other than when they are hatching in the incubators. I would gladly give them their own bedroom, but I let him have his way on this!

I'm glad there's improvement in the bird! Best of wishes.

 

[Mahonri]

Oh yea... I wash my hands at least 30 times a day.... course that's at work, but even around home and especially after I've been handling my girls out back.

 

[Sissy]

I have heard Of xoxoplasmoces.
Read it also on the bag of stall dry.
I wear a painters mask,
but am getting better ones from Med.lab.
and have bottles of disinfecting Pump bottles
gel in each coop
and all over the house.and in the trks.

 

[hen-thusiast]

from UT! Hope your chickens get better!

 

[M To The Maxx]

 

[wombat]

Botulism is a bacterial infection. You can get it from eating infected food, or from botulism entering a wound and reproducing. It is not typically something you can catch from an airborne contamination. The only airborne contamination I've heard of involved production of Botox.

I would say that if you are anywhere near a suspected botulism source, a lot of washing up is in order.

My only personal experience with this was many years ago, working as an intern for the Dept of Natural Resources. We had to go into a wildlife refuge routinely and retrieve dead geese and bag them for the lab, in part to allow the lab to determine if botulism was an issue with the population. We wore rubber gloves that came up to our elbows, bagged these when we finished, and washed them down with a bleach solution afterwards.

Edit: There are different strains of botulism, and I don't know if there is one that is common to live chickens that could affect humans. That's not one I'd chance. Unlike viral infections, most bacteria are somewhat less species specific. OTOH, people don't get Marek's disease.

 

[NateinFL]

I raise my baby chickens inside and my Mom came over and saw it and said "can't you get something from doing that like bird lung or something". I said "What is BIRD LUNG???" lol....

 

[texasgal]

A big Texas size