Skip to content

Friday, Mar. 21, 2025

Can backyard chickens spread bird flu to humans? 

Por Jaijongkit, The Colorado Sun
yes

A woman in Wyoming was hospitalized in February after contracting avian influenza H5N1 from exposure through her backyard chicken flock. However, human infections from backyard poultry are generally rare. 

Avian flu can spread from birds to people through direct contact with infected birds, touching contaminated surfaces or inhaling the virus. Many infected birds do not show symptoms but remain contagious. Avian flu can also spread to dairy cattle, pigs, goats, cats and dogs. 

As of February, Colorado had seen 10 human cases of bird flu since May 2024. Nine came from workers exposed to commercial chicken farms and the last from a dairy farm. 

Nationwide, there have been 70 human cases of bird flu with one fatal case. There is no known human-to-human transmission, with most human cases seen in farm workers in contact with infected cattle and poultry. General risk of avian flu to the public remains low.

See a full discussion of this at The Colorado Sun

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

The Colorado Sun is a journalist-founded, award-winning and nonprofit news outlet based in Denver that strives to cover all of Colorado so that our state — our community — can better understand itself. In this way, we believe we can contribute to a more vibrant, informed and whole Colorado. We are committed to fact-based, in-depth and nonpartisan journalism. We cover everything from politics and culture to the outdoor industry and education. Our goal is to produce the best possible journalism. We do that with the help of you, our readers, and community backers. We launched on Sept. 10, 2018.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.