Last Long Island duck farm working to rebuild flock: East End operation still in quarantine

Crescent Duck Farm in Aquebogue continues its slow but steady march toward recovery after HPAI, or bird flu, was detected there in January. The 3,700 ducklings hatched six weeks ago have gained their white feathers and are growing steadily.

“I’ve said all along it’s a very long road back. I’ve got two flocks of ducks that are 5 1/2, 6 weeks old; they’ve done fine,” said Doug Corwin, owner of Crescent Duck. “To me, the magic number is 24 to 26 weeks, when the ducks are going to start reproducing.”

Crescent Duck is all that’s left of a once thriving Long Island industry, which in the 1950s consisted of more than 90 duck farms.

Crescent Duck Farm is still in quarantine. The staff is still cleaning, following a wet disinfection with a dry fumigation. It is eligible to re-test to see if the quarantine can be lifted, but with the birds being raised off-site and breeding months away, Mr. Corwin is biding his time.

“USDA toured the barn and said it’s in very good shape, but I pushed the testing date off until April 28,” he said. “It doesn’t speed my recovery at all to get them back on the farm. The longer I wait there’s that much more of a safety valve, just in case there is an isolated pocket of virus around. It’s a very contagious, very deadly virus to poultry, but it’s a very weak virus as far as its ability to reproduce without any live hosts.”

According to its website, USDA has expanded bio-security assessments to commercial poultry producers nationwide, prioritizing egg-laying facilities in top-producing states. More than 130 facilities have undergone assessments in 2025, with 38 assessments completed last week alone.

To help prevent further outbreaks, USDA now offers two free, voluntary bio-security assessments, one focused on wildlife risk mitigation and another on general bio-security improvements. Additionally, all farms affected by HPAI must complete a bio-security audit before restocking flocks. USDA is covering up to 75% of costs for the highest-risk bio-security improvements.

For Mr. Corwin, this is one part of what he sees as the only way forward for farmers in his situation. “It’s going to be very, very, very hard to get out of this constant cycle that we’ve been in since 2022 without a combination vaccination and heightened bio-security operation, because it’s so endemic now in the wildlife, he said.”

There’s no need for concern over the remains of the culled animals and eggs; the remains have completely broken down at this point. “If I was out of quarantine, I could spread the compost on any farm field I wanted to because it’s 100% virus-free right now,” Mr Corwin said. “USDA comes down every one to two weeks and actually looks at the stuff, plus every compost pile has about eight spots that had to be temperature recorded daily. Composting went extremely well.”

The upheaval at the federal level is affecting part of the recovery process and Mr. Corwin has yet to be reimbursed for the loss of his flock.

“I think certain things have been slowed down. I should have gotten some level of indemnification, but I haven’t received a penny yet, which is abnormal. I’m not crying over it, so long as it gets rectified eventually.”