I'm pretty certain that one of my chicken is carrying salmonella - do I need to do anything?

[LaurieFairyCake]

Got 3 chickens 10 days ago from a very reputable place so I was assuming they were disease free. However I have definitely had salmonella this week and the only thing I ate different from dh and dd was different eggs when we had them last Saturday - soft boiled.

I basically had explosive diarhhoea for 4 days (so not normal food poisoning - was very weak, nauseous (vomited a few times) and had bright yellow water stools). I've been really ill and just been exhausted for the last 3 days since I started to take Immodium so I could rehydrate.

Do I need to do anything to the chickens - can I just avoid soft boiling the eggs and instead just make frittatas/cakes etc?

Just make sure they're well cooked. If you want salmonella free eggs for soft boiling then get the lion branded ones from the shops. I never soft boil my hen's eggs just in case.

This is a good article about salmonella.

Basically unless you test you won't know and you may have got it from external contact rather than eating a salmonella infected egg. There is a treatment suggested which looks interesting.

Some food poisoning bugs take up to 3 days to incubate so it could be something that you ate that long ago. however when in doubt you should always present to your gp and ask for stool sampling to find out what it is. with all the issues revolving around the new strains of bugs it would be a good idea if this recurs to get tested. Might be an idea just to treat all of the girls as a one off and then see how you go in future.