MATTESON, Ill. — A south suburban community is rallying around a family-run farm after they lost their entire flock of hens to a bird flu outbreak.
It is something farmers across the country are dealing with and it’s having an impact on egg prices.
Experts say egg prices are up nearly 37% from this time last year as the virus continues to linger and unfortunately, there is no end in sight.
“We went from having a perfectly healthy flock to, like, no flock in, like, 72 hours,” Marty Thomas said.
Thomas is the founder of Kakadoodle Farm in south suburban Matteson, a start-up that is dedicated to producing food that is free from chemicals.
Last week Kakadoodle suffered a massive financial hit.
It started after about 30 birds died, which Thomas initially thought was due to the cold weather, but things quickly got much worse.
“And the next day we lost, like, a couple hundred, which was like ‘Okay something is going on,'” Thomas said.
They called their vet and then got the USDA involved.
Testing later confirmed that the flock had been hit by avian influenza.
According to Thomas, the majority of their flock started dying in just a few days. They had just under 3,000 birds.
“There’s no foreseeable end to the avian flu as we see it now. There’s very little the government can do,” Phillip Braun, Clinical Professor of Finance at Northwestern University, said.
The CDC said the outbreak of avian flu has been ongoing since 2022 and there have been cases reported in all 50 states and more than 600 counties.
Experts who spoke with WGN-TV said late last year, a record 20 million chickens died of avian flu, drastically impacting the price of eggs.
“Some areas of the country are seeing worse situation than others,” Braun said.
Thomas says the USDA placed the farm on a 150-day quarantine.
They have since launched a GoFundMe fundraiser to try and help them recover.
“It’s like, kind of swallowing your pride a little bit, you know? So, excuse me, so, yeah, it was a, it was a really hard decision to post it,” Thomas said.
According to Thomas, he was concerned about how people would react.
“How is the community going to react to this, are they going to shun us?” Thomas said.
Instead, people have opened their hearts and their wallets, as thousands have been donated to help them through the setback.
“From both our customers and our community it’s just been, like, unreal the support that we have felt,” Thomas said.
Thomas said once it’s safe to start deliveries again, he asks people to support them through their online platform.
Thomas hopes to rebuild their flock again when the quarantine is lifted in June. They plan on constructing a new chicken coop designed to protect feed from wild birds, which is most likely what caused the outbreak.
