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Joshua Beebe often starts his day by cleaning the tires of trucks and cars entering his poultry farm.

“We spray them off and scrub them with a brush. It’s a precaution; the goal is to eliminate as many potential avenues for a pathogen to enter as possible,” said the owner of Tardif Poultry Farm, located in the Connecticut countryside east of Hartford.

Fear of avian influenza, specifically the HPAI subtype A (H5N1) virus, has been tormenting poultry farmers such as Beebe ever since the current wave of bird flu was detected in eastern Canada in 2021 and began spreading. The north-east US is not a high-risk region for on-farm outbreaks, but the possibility is always there. For Beebe and his workers, vigilance comes at a high cost: in time, money and mental strain.

Beebe has already gone through the trauma of being ordered to destroy his entire flock, 5,000 birds in all. In mid-2024, state-mandated testing detected salmonella in some of his birds. The bacterium can spread through eggs, and certain strains can infect and sicken humans.

The normal cacophony of the farm disappeared. “It was emotionally draining,” Beebe said. “I haven’t gone a day without seeing birds when I walk out my door in over 10 years. The silence [was] the worst.” Eight long months of mandatory quarantine on the farm finally ended the following February, and Beebe has been gingerly rebuilding his flock ever since.

Today, the farm is filled with a constant, low noise of about 3,000 birds clucking, chirping and moving. Beebe raises chickens, turkeys, pomeranian geese and a wide variety of ducks, including different breeds of mallards and welsh harlequins. “I really like the toulouse ducks. They’re a French breed,” he said. The farm sells its products directly to customers.

A fifth-generation resident of the town, Beebe bought Tardif Poultry Farm in 2020 after spending 12 years learning the business at a nearby farm. Now he finds himself doing more than just raising animals; he’s also constantly managing risks.

Strict precautions

At first glance, the vibe at Tardif seems bucolic enough. At the entrance, a shop in a charming little wooden house displays products from other farms, crafters and artists. Milk, homemade spices and candles are carefully arranged.

Clients and friends can visit the shop, but “no one is allowed in the back where the birds are. Period,” Beebe said.

To guard against an outbreak, the farm strictly segregates the birds by age: from the hatchery to chicks, juveniles, and finally adults. “We have different boots for each station,” he said. Sick animals come last – although “we try not to keep sick animals around at this point”. His three employees follow the same flow, avoiding contact with younger birds, with their weaker immune systems, after handling older ones.

If employees have their own chickens at home, they have to wear a set of shoes specific for Beebe’s farm and come with laundered clothes to avoid extra risk.

Every new bird is placed in quarantine for 21 to 35 days after arrival. When birds die for any reason, their bodies are disposed of by burial or composting. In the event of larger die-offs, carcasses may be sent off-site for incineration, through the Connecticut Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory or the University of Connecticut. “Everything is very organized,” Beebe said.

Surrounded by danger

The risks don’t only come from on-the-ground transmission from bird to bird, or from worker to bird. The overwhelming majority of avian flu introductions into domestic poultry have been traced to contact with infected wild birds – not spread between farms, according to a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) spokesperson.

“The virus is so abundant in the wild bird population,” said Richard Webby, who studies host-microbe interactions at the St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Memphis.

When these wild birds stop near the farm to drink the water, eat the feed or come into contact with domestic birds, the virus spreads. But they don’t even have to land to pose a risk.

When birds fly over farms, “even one gram of bird droppings can contain billions of viral particles”, said Ilaria Capua, an Italian virologist known for her research on avian influenza. And even if the birds are kept indoors, a cat or a mouse walking around could spread the virus.

To prevent direct contact between wild and domestic birds, Beebe uses a lot of netting. He’s also hung reflective ribbon high in the trees and placed fake owls around the farm to scare wild birds off.

The climate crisis may also complicate biosecurity efforts. Studies have shown that warming conditions can change how much migratory waterfowl move, with some wild birds reducing movement and others altering the timing of their migration as temperatures rise, according to Diann Prosser, research wildlife biologist at the Eastern Ecological Science Center. “These behavioral shifts mean birds may stay longer in certain areas,” she said.

Even within the farm, Beebe has to contend with extreme heat. Mixing different bird species in the same coop can create biosecurity risks. Yet during a particularly hot day last year, one of the coops became so overheated that he had to move the ducks in with the chickens. “I’d rather combine them for a day than have them die,” he said.

According to Prosser, this could be a concern. “We know that different [types of poultry] have different likelihoods of infection, such as ducks having more than chickens based on biosecurity practices and individual host responses.”

For some farms, even strict measures haven’t been enough. The virus has affected more than 174 million commercial birds since 2022, and there have been 71 confirmed human cases in the US since February 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But even in regions where poultry farms are smaller, including New England, avian flu has struck. “I’m following the cases very closely,” Beebe said. Indeed, Connecticut is bordered by states with reported cases, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

The consequences of having even one confirmed case on a farm are dire. “Once you have one bird positive, you have to depopulate the entire flock. It’s sad, but that’s a mandatory USDA rule,” Indu Upadhyaya, a poultry and food safety expert at the University of Connecticut, said.

The costs of contagion

Beebe knows all too well what it means to depopulate an entire farm.

On 6 June 2024, state personnel showed up for routine mandated animal testing for bird flu and other diseases. Every three months, they collect samples from 30 birds per species, and once a year they draw blood from 300 birds of each species. They also conduct a swab test for 10% of each species.

A week later, on a sunny afternoon, the results arrived: 11 birds tested positive for suspected salmonella. The state quickly placed the farm under quarantine. “That means no birds out, no birds in,” Beebe said. The farm had to cancel orders with its suppliers, damaging those relationships. “Some rumors were going around locally, saying the farm had diseases, and I didn’t say anything. I wish I had been more educational in being open and in telling people what happened,” he said.

At that point, the farm had no money coming in. It also costs about $800 each day to keep the birds alive. After 30 days, another round of testing showed that a couple of the suspected birds had lower salmonella levels but were still positive.

In July, the state gave the farm two choices: depopulate the flock or retest every single bird. The testing costs $6.50 per bird, a price Beebe couldn’t easily cover. “At the time, we had 5,000 birds,” Beebe said.

Tardif Poultry Farm ultimately had to depopulate. The Thanksgiving turkey season – traditionally an important source of income for the farm, selling between 50 and 100 turkeys – was a total bust.

“I didn’t know what was happening to us,” Beebe said. They began by euthanizing the oldest birds, gassing them with carbon dioxide, double-bagging the bodies and getting rid of them in their own dumpster.

Eventually, they had to cull all the birds. “We caught all of them, we put them in a crate, and we have a chamber, like a box that the crate will fit in. We just turn the gas on for so long; it’s pretty quick,” Beebe said.

It took them about 10 days. “It’s probably longer than it should have been, but it was just so depressing,” he said. “It was eerie.”

The farm was still in quarantine until February 2025. The state finally gave the farm permission to repopulate only after testing almost everything the birds touched, including bedding, fences, coops and dirt. This time, the testing cost was shouldered by the Connecticut department of agriculture. Recovery has been slow. “I worked on the bloodlines of some of the birds for 10 years, and it’s all gone,” Beebe said.

Tardif Poultry will never know where the bacteria came from. Was it from someone driving in? From a wild bird? Something on the clothes of an employee?

The expenses continue to mount as Beebe slowly rebuilds his flock. “We’re still collecting birds back, but they’re not cheap. I think we spent $14,000 just on chickens,” Beebe said. He estimated that the total cost of repopulating his farm is now close to $50,000.

All of these recovery costs fell on the farm alone. Beebe sought indemnity payments from the USDA through the Connecticut department of agriculture but was told the farm was ineligible because the depopulation was considered voluntary. Retesting the birds was an option, officials said, even though it was unaffordable for Beebe.

Bryan Hurlburt, commissioner of the Connecticut department of agriculture, said that farmers bear the responsibility of testing for diseases other than bird flu (in the case of Beebe, the further tests after the first salmonella positive test) on their own.

In terms of depopulation and the financial burden it causes for farmers, “we do not have a program at the current time that would offset any of the losses”, said Hurlburt. The USDA does have indemnity programs that Hurlburt encourages farmers to pursue, but these are tied to specific disease-control programs – most notably for avian influenza – and typically do not apply to other infections, which are treated as a private business risk.

For Tardif Poultry Farm, salmonella turned out to be the wrong disease to have.