Avian Flu Halts Hickman's Family Farms Production for Two Years

Hickman’s Family Farms, the largest egg producer in the southwest, is set to halt the majority of its operations for nearly two years due to a recent avian flu infection, company officials confirmed on Friday.

Despite the shutdown, smaller farms in Maricopa and Colorado will continue egg production. However, Glenn Hickman, of Hickman’s Family Farms in Buckeye, stated that hundreds of employees would face layoffs as the company works to rebuild its flock.

“There’s going to be a lot of those people that are going to be negatively affected,” Hickman remarked.

In just the past two weeks, approximately six million chickens died from this latest outbreak, which accounts for 95% of the company’s chickens in Arizona. Hickman explained that all traffic between farms was restricted in an attempt to isolate the affected farm, but these measures were unsuccessful.

Hickman’s ranks among the top 20 egg producers in the country. Despite the crisis, Hickman does not anticipate a sharp increase in egg prices, expecting them to normalize after a steady decline since January.

The company has been operating for nearly 80 years and is concerned about new threats from the bird flu, which is now being found in local wildlife, including sparrows, mice, and squirrels.

While a bird flu vaccine is available internationally, it has yet to receive USDA approval for use in U.S. chickens. Hickman emphasized, “We need to be able to start giving it to our flocks. The quicker we can start vaccinating our nation’s poultry flock, the quicker we can get back to normalized operations.”