David A.

Halvorson
Charter Diplomate American College of Poultry Veterinarians

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1998 Garden Avenue
St. Paul, Minnesota 55113
February 29, 2012
To: Paul Hughes
Fr: David Halvorson, DVM
Re: Question on risk from backyard chickens
The term "backyard chickens" is not well defined, so we'll use your example of less than
10 hens in an urban environment as our starting point. From that point, we'll assume that
these chickens are not routinely moved to poultry auctions and spend most of their lives
at home which is in the USA or Canada. (Third world backyard chickens may be raised
quite differently and so we are not speaking of them here.)
That said, the urban flock of six to ten female chickens is very unlikely to pose disease
risk to other poultry and is very unlikely to pose a nuisance risk to neighbors or the
community. The possible food safety risk is comparable to food raised on commercial
farms - there are some advantages to both systems. I would categorize the risk of disease
of poultry or risk of food safety of humans as negligible to low.
Commercial poultry also have very low risk, when reared in total confinement. If a
producer is smaller than "commercial" size but bigger than backyard size there are areas
for risk to increase. Often moderately sized poultry operations, with less biosecurity in
force than larger farms and more poultry than backyard farms, may have multiple species
and ages, have contact with poultry markets, and attract wild birds.