Never leave your shit on someone else’s farm!
Exploring bird flu prevention with farm owner Shannon Hayes. Discover boot washing, flock protection with coyotes, and best practices in biosecurity. Summary 🎯 The Lede: Bird flu cycles have shortened, forcing farmers like Shannon Hayes to reimagine their biosecurity protocols completely. Farm owner Shannon Hayes reveals how her family protects their livestock from bird flu at Sap Bush Hollow Farm. Key strategies include washing boots with soap and vinegar solutions, timing poultry purchases for summer months, ending public farm tours, and maintaining coyote populations as natural buffers against wild waterfowl. Hayes emphasizes that bird flu prevention requires continuous practice and adaptation, not perfection. The episode highlights farmers’ critical but often overlooked role in biosecurity and food supply protection during disease outbreaks Click here to view the printable newsletter with images. More readable than a transcript, which can also be found below. Contents Please comment and ask questions: at the comment section at the bottom of the show notes on LinkedIn via email YouTube channel DM on Instagram , TikTok to @healthhats Production Team Kayla Nelson: Web and Social Media Coach, Dissemination, Help Desk Leon van Leeuwen: editing and site managementresil Oscar van Leeuwen: video editing Julia Higgins: Digit marketing therapy Steve Heatherington: Help Desk and podcast production counseling Joey van Leeuwen, Drummer, Composer, and Arranger, provided the music for the intro, outro, proem, and reflection, including Moe’s Blues for Proem and Reflection and Bill Evan’s Time Remembered for on-mic clips. Podcast episode on YouTube Inspired by and Grateful to Sue and Jay Spivack, Jim Donahue, Pat Hultz Links and references Sap Bush Hollow Farm The Hearth of Sap Bush Hollow Podcast & The Radical Homemaker Blog “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards , ‘ Your Local Epidemiologist’ Substack by Katelyn Jetelina and Edward Nirenberg New York State Grown and Certified Episode Proem The only time I felt I could draw was when my Oma was dying. I sketched the outside of her. I had recently read “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards , which revolutionized art instruction by teaching readers to perceive edges, spaces, and relationships—core skills for realistic drawing. It features exercises in contour and blind contour drawing, emphasizing the importance of drawing what you actually see, not what you think you see. Now, when I’m curious, I want to know the backstory to fill out the edges. My antennae stirred when reading ‘ Your Local Epidemiologist’ about Bird Flu. The Paramedic and Emergency Nurse personas in me feel anxious. No reports are coming out of the CDC, the aggregation of State infection data has been discontinued, and the administration is comfortable with days-long reaction times to disasters, having defunded and staffed mitigation work. So, look out farther to the edges of bird flu –the front line of people managing flocks of birds. Bird flu is nothing new, but the usual 10- to 15-year interval between epidemics has changed. Bird flu isn’t dying out or going dormant anymore. The CDC is reporting incidents of infection jumping from birds to people. Our federal government seems unprepared – danger, danger, danger. I know so little, and I’m scared. Not a healthy mix. Podcast intro Welcome to Health Hats, the Podcast. I’m Danny van Leeuwen, a two-legged cisgender old white man of privilege who knows a little bit about a lot of healthcare and a lot about very little. We will listen and learn about what it takes to adjust to life’s realities in the awesome circus of healthcare. Let’s make some sense of all of this. Introducing Shannon Hayes Fortunately, I have a dear friend, Shannon Hayes, owner and CEO of Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York – West Fulton. Shannon and I met 25 years ago when my wife and I were buying lamb, chicken, turkey, and eggs from her parents. Shannon podcast