The Reichardt family has devoted the last 30 years to perfecting a line of ducks famed for succulent pink meat and well suited to the slower, less stressful husbandry of a small Petaluma farm.
Now their prized poultry is being delivered, not to the Bay Area’s finest Michelin-starred restaurants, but to the county dump.
Avian influenza has barreled through Sonoma County’s historic poultry region, forcing the slaughter of 1.1 million birds and inflicting heartbreak and economic disaster on the Reichardts and other small family farmers in the once-famed “Egg Capital of the World.”
“We’re still in the midst of wrapping our heads around it all,” said Jennifer Reichardt, 34, a fifth-generation farmer who was required by law to euthanize 4,900 of their beloved “Liberty Ducks” after the virus was detected Dec. 7. “There was never going to be a good time for this to hit, but during the holidays it is especially hard.”
At least six neighboring farms in the Reichardt’s bucolic Liberty Valley, on the western edge of Petaluma, are also afflicted. They include Sunrise Farms, a fourth-generation farm and the largest egg producer in Sonoma County, with an estimated 500,000 birds.
The domino effect on other local businesses, including feed stores and trucking, is incalculable.
“It’s disastrous, a big chain reaction,” said Bobby Falcon of Hunt & Behrens Feed Mill and Store, first opened in 1921 along the Petaluma River, which has lost an estimated 40% of its business selling 24-ton loads of corn and soy-based poultry feed to local farms. “What happens to them falls to us, then the grain brokers. … It filters down about 10 or 11 times.”
A state of emergency has been declared by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to help mitigate the effects of the disaster, including assistance for businesses. The county has also designated a special waste section of its central landfill to dispose of the birds, typically killed by sealing up barns and piping in carbon dioxide. State and federal authorities provide expertise, although they’re stretched thin.
Until recently, California’s poultry farms seemed to have been spared from the crisis. Over the past three years, a deadly and highly contagious virus known as H5N1 has circled the globe, taking a staggering toll on birds in more than 80 nations.
After emerging in 2020, the virus triggered major outbreaks in Europe, Africa and Asia. It arrived in the U.S. in January 2022 and stormed through the nation’s largest concentrations of poultry farms in the East and Midwest, pushing up egg prices.
Skipping like a stone over water, the virus landed in Merced County in October, then Petaluma’s Liberty Valley in November.
Despite a swift response — biosecurity measures at farm entrances, the immediate slaughter of potentially infected animals, quarantining of affected farms — the disease has continued to spread.
In only two months, the outbreaks have claimed the lives of an estimated 4.5 million chickens, ducks and turkeys in five California counties. Of these, over 2 million were egg-laying hens, 1.5 million were broiler chickens, and the rest were ducks and turkeys, according to Bill Mattos of the Modesto-based California Poultry Federation.
What’s devastating isn’t just the grim task of killing birds, and huge financial losses, said Mattos. Farmers aren’t allowed to start rebuilding their flocks for 120 days, to prevent repeat infection. Then those fluffy new chicks need weeks to mature. Adjacent farms are under strict quarantine measures, unable to move or process birds, so they lose valuable contracts with buyers. Meanwhile, costs mount.
Poultry was once a prosperous business for this region, where the world’s first incubator was invented in the late 1800s, according to Eric Stanley of the Museum of Sonoma County.
“That really spawned the explosion of the egg industry. There were hundreds and hundreds of farms,” he said. The Petaluma River and nearby railroads offered easy access to affluent San Francisco markets.
But with the state’s road expansion, Sonoma County lost its poultry farms to the much larger and cheaper Central Valley, he said. Trucks’ improved suspension systems could gently ship eggs all over the nation.
The region became famed for what it is today — a monoculture of grapes.
To survive, poultry farmers created a new niche: the Bay Area’s farm-to-table grocery stores and restaurants.
“They are maintaining our legacies and traditions,” said Stanley. “They’re sustaining the heritage things that once gave character to the entire region.”
John Reichardt set out to to raise a meatier, larger and tastier animal. His flock of white Liberty Ducks, a type of Pekin Duck, got off to a modest start in 1992 in his garage, then expanded to a barn, then several barns.
The ducks are antibiotic and hormone-free, with fresh straw for roosting and room to roam. While most ducks are sold at six weeks of age, Liberty Ducks are reared for nine. Lean, but with a distinct layer of fat under the tasty skin, they are prized by restaurants such as Napa’s French Laundry, Berkeley’s Chez Panisse and Kato in Los Angeles.
Experts suspect that the animals were infected by migrating wild birds, although the virus can also be spread by contaminated farm equipment, vehicle tires or shoes.
Sonoma County, with many small and scattered bodies of water, lies along the Pacific Flyway, where populations of migrating birds increase ten-fold in the winter.
“The main reservoir of the virus are waterfowl — the ducks and geese that like the really rich habitat that California supplies,” said veterinarian Maurice Pitesky of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, who studies the spread of avian diseases.The federal government’s surveillance program has detected the virus in wild birds in 14 California counties this migratory season.
New research suggests that California’s shrinking wild spaces are forcing wild birds to congregate in dairy lagoons, irrigation canals and wastewater treatment ponds, he said. California has lost about 95% of its historic wetlands.
“We’re concentrating waterfowl onto smaller areas, which facilitates disease transmission,” said Pitesky. “This also puts those wild animals closer to our commercial poultry facilities. Potentially infected birds are right next to barns and ranches.”
But the poultry farms have also recently attracted unwelcome human visitors: Berkeley-based members of the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, which targets farms with demonstrations and organized incursions. Last month, a member of the group was sentenced to jail for protests at another Liberty Valley duck farm and Sunrise Farms in 2018 and 2019.
Sonoma County farm bureau officials say that the group also trespassed onto those farms in November, within the incubation period of the virus. Activists have not been charged in those events. In an email to the Press Democrat, one member of the group blamed the farms for the outbreaks because of the manner in which the birds are housed and other factors.
“You can’t prove it one way or another — but you can’t disprove it, either,” said Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt, who represents the district where the farms are located. “That’s created a lot of anxiety and frustration.”
Until winter recedes, the virus will continue to haunt Liberty Valley. Fear follows workers as they feed healthy birds, wearing hazmat suits and disposable booties. Once-busy farms lie silent, with “Keep Out” signs banning visitors.
“We are staring down our greatest challenge yet,” said Jennifer Reichardt, who has created a GoFundMe campaign to keep their farm afloat while it works to keep its other properties safe. Supporters have been generous in their response, lifting the family’s spirits.
“There’s a huge industry at risk here of disappearing,” said Reichardt. “We are focusing not only on the preservation of our business but of all family farms in the area. We’re hoping to work together, moving forward, to break through and survive.”
