Researchers have detected more than 200 zoonotic diseases worldwide, and a team in Greifswald, northern Germany, is now investigating how everyday contact with domesticated animals — including backyard Silkie Bantam chickens — contributes to the risk that pathogens jump to humans and potentially trigger the next global pandemic.

The project, reported by Deutsche Welle on December 12, 2025, follows scientists as they physically examine hobby chickens kept in private settings. The reporting frames a question with direct relevance to veterinary practice: can the way owners feed and care for their animals lower the odds of pathogen spillover into human households?

Why does close animal contact matter?

Everyday affectionate routines — cuddling the cat, brushing the horse — expose people to parasites, viruses and other pathogens capable of causing serious illness, the researchers warn. The risk sits not in exotic wildlife markets alone but in ordinary domestic environments where humans and animals share close quarters.

That framing carries weight for clinicians on both sides of the profession:

• Companion-animal practice: routine preventive and hygienic care — and owner education about it — becomes a frontline public-health intervention, not just an animal-welfare service.
• Food-animal and hobby poultry practice: backyard flocks such as the Silkie Bantams examined in Greifswald represent an understudied interface between human households and potential viral or parasitic reservoirs.
• Public health: the study's core premise is that zoonotic spillover from domestic animals could seed a pandemic-scale event, making husbandry practices a surveillance target.

What is the Greifswald study actually doing?

Details on sample size and study design remain limited in the published report, which accompanied fieldwork rather than presenting results. What is established:

• The research team is based in Greifswald, in northern Germany.
• The work is described as a major, extensive study covering multiple questions on animal keeping and human health.
• Field examinations of privately kept Silkie Bantam chickens form part of the data collection.
• Central questions include whether feeding and care practices can reduce zoonotic transmission risk, and what owners need to know about preventive, hygienic animal husbandry.

No findings, pathogen identifications or prevalence figures from the flock examinations have been released in the source material.

What changes at the exam table?

For now, the practical takeaway for veterinarians is preventive rather than diagnostic. The study's premise reinforces the role of practitioners in advising owners on hygienic handling, feeding and general husbandry of animals kept in close domestic contact — from cats and horses to backyard poultry.

The Greifswald team's broader ambition is to quantify how keeping animals affects human health in general, a question that spans parasite exposure, viral transmission and the microbiological consequences of the human-animal interface in ordinary households.

As data from the Silkie Bantam examinations and the wider project emerge, the study could give veterinary practices an evidence base for concrete hygiene and husbandry recommendations aimed at the backyard-animal owners who now sit on the pandemic-prevention front line.