I was at our local farm supply store the other day and saw a sign indicating they were out of chicken coops and trying to find more from different sources. I wonder if there’s a run on backyard chickens as people spend more time at home. There are some positive aspects to that – and
Another hand sanitizer plea: Glycerol
Hopefully this is the last time I’ll take up a blog post to send out a request, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’m helping Dixon’s Distilled Spirits repurpose their alcohol to make hand sanitizer during the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve donated a few thousand litres of hand sanitizer to healthcare providers and first responders over
Wanted: Hydrogen peroxide and glycerol
As I mentioned recently, a local distillery here in Guelph, Dixon’s Distilled Spirits, has started producing hand sanitizer for healthcare facilities and essential services to help with the supply shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m helping them manufacture it according to World Health Organization guidelines, mainly by helping to scavenge the two non-alcohol
Hand sanitizer: A community effort
With all the stress of these extraordinary times, there are countless good news stories about people stepping up to help. These often get buried amid the scarier news stories, but they’re important to recognize – not that people are doing it for recognition, but to show our resilience. I never thought I’d be writing about
Psittacosis from a horse
I’ve had this paper from One Health (Chan et al 2017) on my “to blog” pile for a while, since it’s an interesting story. Like any case report, it’s a bit of an oddball infection, and not likely indicative of a major or new risk. However, there are often a few good general
Petting Zoos, Outbreaks and Denial
I think petting zoos can be great. I’ve taken my kids to many and think they’re a great way for people to see and interact with animals they would not normally encounter.
However, there’s always some risk, and petting zoos range from exceptionally well run to horrible. It seems like there’s been steady improvement over
Flesh Eating Disease with a Pony Link
The bacterium Streptococcus equi subsp. zooepidemicus (often simply called Streptococcus zooepidemicus) is one that I think I understand less and less, including the risks this predominantly equine-associated bug poses to humans. It’s a well-known and common bacterium in horses, both healthy and sick, and can also be found in dogs and cats (where it
Clean Hands Save Lives: Horsey-Style
Infection control isn’t rocket science. Wash your hands, don’t eat that, keep your finger out of your nose… things you learned in kindergarten go a long way to preventing infections. The basic nature of the core infection control concepts is also a barrier – hand washing isn’t fancy, new or associated with some fancy machine.
Hand Hygiene for Vets and Vet Students
Hand hygiene is an incredibly basic every-day infection control measure, and one of the most important means of preventing the spread of infectious pathogens. Hand hygiene should be used at home, at work, and especially in healthcare environments where there may be more bugs and more susceptible individuals. That includes veterinary clinics. Also keep in
Turtles and botulism
As reported on barfblog.com (with, as ever, an entertaining title: You see a cute turtle, I see a bug factory: Infant botulism from C. butyricum) a recent paper in the journal Epidemiology and Infection (Shelley et al. 2015) reports an unusual turtle-associated disease.
When we think about turtles and infections (especially infections