🧼 Diseases You Can Catch From Livestock

By Sam, Founder of FarmFitUSA · Researched and written in-house · Last reviewed August 2026

The handful that actually matter around poultry and livestock, and the routines that prevent them.

The handful that actually matter around poultry and livestock, and the routines that prevent them.

Why This Is Worth Reading Once

Zoonoses are diseases that pass from animals to people. Living with livestock raises your exposure, and the honest position is that the overall risk is low but not zero, that a small number of specific organisms account for most real cases, and that basic routines prevent nearly all of them.

This is a short list worth knowing properly rather than a reason for anxiety.

Salmonella and Backyard Poultry

The most common one by a wide margin. Healthy-looking chickens and ducks routinely carry Salmonella in their gut and shed it in droppings, which contaminates feathers, feet, eggshells and everything the bird touches.

Outbreaks linked to backyard flocks are reported every year in the United States and cluster around a few behaviours: kissing or snuggling birds, keeping them indoors, and eating or drinking around the coop.

Prevention is entirely mechanical. Wash hands with soap after any contact with birds, their eggs, their feed or their housing — hand sanitiser is a poor substitute when hands are visibly soiled. Keep dedicated coop shoes that do not come into the house. Do not clean waterers or equipment in the kitchen sink. Do not let poultry into the house.

Children under five, adults over sixty-five, pregnant people and anyone immunocompromised are at meaningfully higher risk of severe illness and should not handle birds or clean coops.

Eggs: collect often, keep them clean rather than washing them heavily, and cook them. Contamination is generally on the shell, and washing can drive bacteria through the shell pores if done wrong.

Campylobacter

Also common in poultry, also usually a gut organism in birds that appear well. Same transmission, same prevention. It is a leading cause of bacterial diarrhoea and can be genuinely severe.

Q Fever

Caused by Coxiella burnetii, and the one most homesteaders have never heard of. It matters around goats, sheep and cattle, specifically at birthing. The organism concentrates in birth fluids and placenta and is carried in aerosol — meaning it is inhaled, not just picked up on hands.

Practical implications: wear gloves for assisted births, dispose of placenta and birth material rather than leaving it, and do not let pregnant women assist at livestock births. Q fever is a genuine risk in pregnancy.

Ringworm and Orf

Ringworm is a fungus, not a worm, and passes readily from calves, goats and cats. Circular scaly lesions, treatable, unpleasant.

Orf is a viral skin disease of sheep and goats that produces painful sores on hands. Gloves when handling animals with mouth scabs.

Rabies

Rare but always fatal once symptomatic, and worth knowing where it stands. Any bite from a wild mammal, or from livestock behaving abnormally, is a same-day medical question, not a wait-and-see one.

Toxoplasmosis

Associated with cat faeces and with undercooked meat. The specific and serious risk is in pregnancy. Pregnant people should not change cat litter or handle it, and should be careful around soil where cats defecate.

Tetanus

Not strictly a zoonosis, but the homestead risk is real and constant — puncture wounds, manure, soil, rusty fencing. Clostridium tetani lives in soil and animal faeces.

Check that your tetanus booster is current. Adults need one every ten years, and sooner for a dirty wound. This is the single highest-value five-minute action in this entire guide.

The Routines That Cover Most Of It

Handwashing with soap after animal contact, every time. Dedicated footwear that stays outside. Gloves for births, wounds and anything visibly infected. No eating or drinking in animal areas. Keep tetanus current. Keep vulnerable household members out of high-exposure jobs.

That list is unglamorous and it does the overwhelming majority of the work.

Where We Are Honest

This is a domain where advice runs to extremes — either livestock are a biohazard or "people have kept chickens for thousands of years." Neither is useful.

The realistic picture: the individual risk to a healthy adult with sensible hygiene is small, the risk to a toddler who handles birds and then puts hands in mouth is meaningfully higher, and almost every documented case traces back to a specific, avoidable behaviour.

If you develop a persistent fever, severe or bloody diarrhoea, an infected wound, or a flu-like illness after assisting at a birth, tell the doctor you keep livestock. Many of these are diagnosed late simply because nobody mentioned the animals.

REFERENCES

• CDC Healthy Pets, Healthy People and zoonotic disease guidance.
• National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians (NASPHV) compendium.
• World Health Organization zoonoses fact sheets.

How to Buy Smart

Quality varies enormously between suppliers, and with powders and dried material you usually cannot tell by looking. Buy from someone who states the species, the plant part, the country of origin and a harvest or best-before date. Vague labelling almost always means a commodity blend.

We use the Natural Pet Parasite Cleanse from CleanseParasites for this. No affiliate arrangement — we link where we actually shop.

Common Questions

Do I need to worry if my birds look healthy?

Healthy birds are the usual source. Carriage is normal and symptomless in poultry, which is exactly why routine hygiene matters more than watching for sick animals.

Should I wash eggs?

Collect them clean and often. If washing, use water warmer than the egg and refrigerate afterwards. Heavy washing removes the natural cuticle and can make contamination worse.

Are children safe around chickens?

With supervision, handwashing and no face contact, most families manage fine. Under-fives are the group where guidance is most cautious, and that caution is evidence-based.

Is raw milk part of this?

Yes, and it has its own considerations — covered separately in our guide on raw milk risk.

Educational and informational purposes only. FarmFitUSA content is not medical or veterinary advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, remedy, or prevent any disease. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. Consult a qualified professional before acting on anything here, and call a vet or a doctor when the situation warrants it.