CDC updated its backyard poultry investigation on August 27, and the numbers have not gotten the attention they deserve. Ten multistate Salmonella outbreaks — Altona, Enteritidis, Indiana, Infantis, Kedougou, Mbandaka and Saintpaul — are tied to one thing: contact with backyard chickens and ducks.

  • 1,061 confirmed infections, up 247 since the July 27 update
  • 46 states and Puerto Rico
  • 234 hospitalizations, 33% of the 717 patients with information available
  • Two deaths, one in Washington and one in Georgia
  • Illness onsets from January 20 through August 6, 2026
  • 23% of patients are children under five years old

Put next to every other Salmonella investigation CDC has open this year, this one is not close. It is the largest by case count, by hospitalizations and by geography. It has also produced no recall, no named company, and no way for a buyer to learn what they bought.

How it grew

CDC updateCasesStatesHospitalizationsDeaths
April 23, 20263413130
May 14, 202618431531
June 17, 2026513431341
July 27, 202681444 + P.R.2011
August 27, 20261,06146 + P.R.2342

Source: CDC investigation updates, April 23 through August 27, 2026.

Seven hatcheries are linked. None has been named.

CDC says the outbreak strains have been traced to seven hatcheries and that it is “working with state partners to notify the hatcheries of these links.” Of 324 patients who owned backyard poultry, 267 (82%) had bought or obtained birds since January 1, 2026 — most from agricultural retail stores, with others coming from people they knew, directly from hatcheries, or from local farms.

The laboratory work is not ambiguous. Investigators in Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon and Tennessee sampled backyard birds and the insides of the boxes used to ship live poultry from hatcheries to retail stores. Whole genome sequencing matched the Enteritidis, Mbandaka, Kedougou and Saintpaul in those samples to the strains in sick people.

Read that again. The outbreak strain was found inside the shipping boxes. In a food outbreak, that is the moment a product gets recalled and a firm gets named. Here, a family that bought chicks at a farm store in April still has no way to find out whether their birds came from one of the seven.

A quarter of the patients are under five

The median age is 35, but 23% of the 1,059 patients with age information are children younger than five. In the first April snapshot, when the outbreak was still just Saintpaul, the median age was 12 and 41% were under five. CDC’s own guidance is that children under five should not handle chicks or ducklings at all. Anyone who has walked into a feed store in March knows how that guidance meets reality: the chick tubs sit on the floor, at toddler height, with no barrier and often no sink in sight.

The duck signal has held all season. Among 242 Saintpaul patients who specified a species, 195 (81%) reported chicks or chickens and 108 (45%) reported ducklings or ducks. Of the 42 who knew the breed, 32 (76%) named Pekin ducks.

The resistance picture got worse over the summer

Sequencing of 1,056 human, 12 animal and 30 environmental samples predicts resistance to fosfomycin in 595 samples, tetracycline in 130, nalidixic acid in 132, streptomycin in 46, gentamicin in 34, sulfisoxazole in 21, chloramphenicol in 12, ampicillin in 7, and ceftriaxone and ceftiofur in 5 each. Another 133 samples show predicted nonsusceptibility to ciprofloxacin. Only 344 showed no predicted resistance at all.

Ceftriaxone is the drug of choice for a child with invasive salmonellosis; ciprofloxacin is the drug of choice for an adult. Both are compromised here. The ampicillin and ceftriaxone counts in particular jumped between July and August. CDC’s companion research on antimicrobial resistance in backyard poultry outbreaks from 2018 to 2023 makes clear this is a trend line, not a one-year surprise.

Historical context, because the season is not over

The worst backyard poultry year CDC has recorded was 2019: 1,134 cases in 49 states, 219 hospitalizations and two deaths, at final count in October. 2026 stands at 1,061 cases and 234 hospitalizations as of an August 27 snapshot, with onsets still being reported into August and a three- to four-week reporting lag behind every one of them. The hospitalization count has already passed 2019’s full-year total.

And these are only the culture-confirmed infections. The published estimate CDC works from is that roughly 29 Salmonella infections occur for every one that is diagnosed and reported (Scallan et al., Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2011). Apply that arithmetic and the real number this year is in the tens of thousands.

There is no recall here, and there is no rule either

No product will be pulled, because the vehicle is a live animal. FDA does not regulate hatcheries. FSIS jurisdiction starts at slaughter. What exists instead is the USDA National Poultry Improvement Plan, and on CDC’s own page both the hatchery best management practices and the U.S. Salmonella Monitored Program are described as things a hatchery adopts or joins voluntarily.

Ten outbreaks. Seven hatcheries. Two dead. And the control program is one a hatchery is free to decline.

Four things that would move the number

  • Name the hatcheries. Sequencing linked them. The people buying chicks are the ones bearing the risk, and they cannot avoid a supplier they are not permitted to know about.
  • Make Salmonella monitoring a condition of shipping live birds to the retail public, not an optional credential.
  • Require point-of-sale disclosure, a handwashing station and out-of-reach display at every retail chick and duckling bin. Retailers already do harder things than this.
  • Sample the shipping boxes routinely instead of only during outbreak investigations. When investigators in six states looked this year, they found the outbreak strains inside them.

Questions flock owners are asking

Can I find out whether my birds came from one of the seven hatcheries?

Not from CDC. It has not named them and has said only that it is notifying them through state partners. Ask the store where you bought the birds which hatchery supplied that shipment, and ask whether that hatchery participates in the U.S. Salmonella Monitored Program. Keep the receipt and any paperwork that came with them.

My chicks look perfectly healthy. Doesn’t that mean they are clean?

No. CDC is explicit that backyard poultry can carry Salmonella while looking healthy and clean, and the germs spread to everything in the area where the birds live and roam — bedding, feeders, water, boots, hands.

Do I need to get rid of my flock?

CDC is not telling anyone to depopulate. The risk here is handled through hygiene and separation, not removal. What matters is handwashing after every contact, dedicated coop shoes that stay outside, no eating or drinking around the birds, and no kissing or snuggling them.

Are the eggs from my own flock safe to eat?

Collect them often so they do not sit and get dirty or crack. Throw away cracked eggs, because germs on the shell pass through a crack more easily. Do not wash eggs in cold water, which pulls bacteria inward; clean visible debris with fine sandpaper, a brush or a cloth. Refrigerate, and cook until yolk and white are firm, or to 160°F for egg dishes.

My child handled the chicks. What should I watch for?

Symptoms usually start 6 hours to 6 days after exposure: diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps. Call a doctor for a fever above 102°F with diarrhea, diarrhea lasting more than two days without improvement, bloody diarrhea, vomiting that will not stay down, or signs of dehydration such as very little urine, dry mouth or dizziness on standing. Children under five are the group most likely to end up hospitalized, and CDC advises they should not handle chicks or ducklings at all.

If antibiotics are needed, will they work?

Most Salmonella infections resolve without antibiotics. But given the resistance found in these strains, ask that treatment be guided by antimicrobial susceptibility testing rather than a standard first choice, and ask about an infectious disease consult for a severe or complicated infection. The full CDC investigation notice is worth ten minutes.

Is the season over?

No. The most recent illness onset in the August 27 update was August 6, and it takes three to four weeks to confirm that a new case belongs to an outbreak. In 2019, the last comparable year, cases kept accumulating until CDC closed the investigation in late October.

Live poultry sales to households have been driving Salmonella outbreaks for more than a decade, and the pattern has been documented across multiple years in the peer-reviewed literature. The birds are not the problem. The absence of any enforceable obligation on the people selling them is.