Dan McKernan Is Keeping Animals Safe From Coronavirus On His Farm
Dan McKernan of "Saved by the Farm", a new series on Animal Planet, addresses concerns about spreading COVID-19 to any of the animals in his care at the family farm.
Video Transcript
MATT FORTE: Dan, how are you doing, man? How is life over there? It looks like you're making the best of it right now and you guys are all right. How are you, sir?
DAN MCKERNAN: Yeah, we are making the best of it. You know, COVID has definitely made it a little choppy, definitely choppy waters.
MATT FORTE: Right.
DAN MCKERNAN: We had to put our volunteer program on hold, and we're highly dependent on our volunteers here. So the staff's been just working long hours, making sure all the animals are safe and well fed. And I don't think they have any idea anything's going on.
MATT FORTE: I was going to say, right, they don't know the difference. It's not like-- a lot of people's dogs and cats have noticed that their humans haven't left for a long time. But these guys-- just knock on wood-- it's just business as usual for them.
DAN MCKERNAN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They've [INAUDIBLE].
MATT FORTE: Somebody's charging at you.
DAN MCKERNAN: Yeah, we've got the babies here.
MATT FORTE: I couldn't tell through the camera if that was a tiny pig of if they were just far away. That's fantastic.
DAN MCKERNAN: No, they just roll up and say what's up.
MATT FORTE: Amazing. I'm incredibly curious. There's still so much we don't know about the virus. But, you know, the recent news there was a tiger in the Bronx Zoo who tested positive for COVID, which is wild-- you know, has any of that or any of this whole crazy thing impacted how you guys are taking care of the animals? Has it brought up questions you've never had to answer before? What's it been like?
DAN MCKERNAN: Yeah. No, we're definitely-- I mean, we always have to worry about, like, zoonotic diseases when it comes to taking care of animals. But the fact that humans can get it and now animals, and it can-- it seems like a caregiver was the one that gave it to a tiger there.
MATT FORTE: Yeah.
DAN MCKERNAN: That's just pretty insane to think about. I mean, we're wearing protective gloves, and, you know, we cover our faces when we're close together, the staff.
MATT FORTE: Yeah.
DAN MCKERNAN: And then we disinfect everything every day. So--
MATT FORTE: Yeah, doing what you can, yeah.
DAN MCKERNAN: Yeah. Yeah. So that's about the changes that we've made. But the moment the tiger caught it I was just like, oh my gosh. Can you imagine if all these animals caught it?
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