PHOENIX -- The largest egg producer in the southwest will have to shut down a majority of egg production for nearly two years following a recent avian flu infection, company officials announced Friday.
While the majority of egg operations are being paused, Hickman's still has smaller farms in Maricopa and in Colorado, which will continue producing eggs.
However, Glenn Hickman of Hickman's Family Farms in Buckeye said the company will have to lay off hundreds of employees as they work to rebuild their flock.
"There's going to be a lot of those people that are going to be negatively affected," Hickman said.
RELATED: A Buckeye farm lost a million chickens to Avian Flu causing them to adjust how they operate
Over the last two weeks, six million chickens have died at Hickman's as a result of the most recent infection. Hickman said that accounts for 95% of their chickens in Arizona.
"We shut down all traffic between farms and all personnel, everything we possibly could do to isolate that farm, and it didn't work," Hickman said.
Hickman's is one of the top 20 egg producers in the country, but Hickman does not believe the situation at their farm will impact the price of eggs.
A third-generation egg producer, Hickman's, has been in operation for nearly 80 years.
Hickman said that the new threat from the bird flu is that it is now being found in local animals, not just migrating birds. Local sparrows, mice and squirrels have all tested positive for bird flu, Hickman said.
There is a bird flu vaccine available internationally but it has not been approved by the USDA for use in chickens in the U.S.
"We need to be able to start giving it to our flocks, and the quicker that we can start vaccinating our nation's poultry flock, the quicker that we can get back to normalized operations," Hickman said.
When asked about what this will do for egg prices in Arizona, Hickman doesn't expect there to be a sharp increase and believes that prices will normalize after steadily declining since January.
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