Keeping backyard chickens was already on the rise, and the hobby has become even more popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, a University of Georgia researcher cautions that the practice has risks not just for chickens, but for wildlife and people as well.
“As a researcher who studies pathogen movement along different groups, I see backyard chickens as a potential interface where pathogens can spill over into wild birds, or vice versa, and even into people,” said Sonia Hernandez, professor of wildlife disease at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources and the College of Veterinary Medicine. “Owners need to seek information and medical care for their animals to minimize those risks.”
Hernandez and first author Andrea Ayala published their comprehensive review of pathogen transmission at the backyard chicken-wild bird interface in Frontiers in Veterinary Science. Ayala, now a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University, earned a Ph.D. in the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Comparative Biomedical Sciences program.
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