Despite recent reports, Crescent Duck Farm in Aquebogue has no plans to close its doors permanently.
“I laid off my packing house company the day I heard of the declaration of the flu as we had nothing left,” company president Doug Corwin said in an email Wednesday evening. “I also sent NYS a WARN notice. My farming company is still active and working to help get us out of the quarantine.”
While the farm did lose between 80,000 and 100,000 eggs in the quarantine process, eggs that were being cooled have been deemed safe. These eggs were cleaned in a chlorine solution and transported to an undisclosed, prepared location to begin incubation. “If [an egg] doesn’t go into an incubator, it goes into a cooler, where the development stops, and then when you’re ready, you put them in an incubator. We were allowed to hold onto those,” said Mr. Corwin. “By the time they’re taken off the property, they’re relatively old. They’re not gonna hatch out very well. But we’re crossing our fingers; we’re hoping we can get enough of these eggs to maintain a place to start. It wouldn’t be enough for me to start this place, but it would be enough to try to reproduce a secondary [batch] to start this place. So that’s where we are with eggs.”
Because there will likely be too few ducks in the first hatch of eggs to start the farm, and ducks take six months to reach maturity, it will be the second round of birds that truly restart production. “I’ve got to start as soon as possible, but I’ve got to hatch the eggs. That takes four weeks … A bird isn’t mature for six months to start laying eggs, then I have to get enough eggs from them to hatch out a second generation. Then that second generation is going have to grow at least another six months. So all this takes time,” said Mr. Corwin.
Mr. Corwin is thankful for all the support from the community and elsewhere. Beyond rebuilding his flock and maintaining duck farming on Long Island and the East End, he plans to push for a vaccine. “It’s a big challenge, but thankfully, New York State allowed us to take this step, and we’re going to take advantage of it and try to see if we can’t start up again. Support has been phenomenal. Political supports been strong. We’re going to try again.”