Once considered the “Egg Basket of the World,” Petaluma’s last remaining commercial egg farmers face one of their biggest challenges yet — amid outbreaks of avian flu — to preserve their industry and their city’s culture, where egg queens are anointed at egg parades and chicken iconography adorns the streets.
Petaluma was the center of technological advancements in egg production that revolutionized the industry, but Jordan Marht, a fourth-generation egg farmer at the independent hatchery Petaluma Egg Farm, has had to take drastic measures to protect his flock and his family’s business.
While the U.S. Department of Agriculture has worked to limit the spread of the avian flu since its most recent outbreak in 2022, it’s come at a cost — more than 23 million birds in California have been euthanized since 2022. These costs have spread to consumers as eggs – traditionally a cheap form of protein – have surged in price. But the “hen-demic” has hit Petaluma egg farmers especially hard because of the industry’s importance to the town.
When the avian flu swept through the city in December of 2023. Marht’s Petaluma Egg Farm had to euthanize tens of thousands of birds. At the same time, Sunrise Farms, the only other egg producer of significant volume left in Petaluma, was forced to put down 550,000 birds — and for the first time in over a century of its existence, Sunrise did not have a single chicken on its premises.
“It’s an overwhelming time for a producer and for the customer, and it definitely makes navigating the industry difficult right now,” Marht said. “Especially when you don’t know if tomorrow you’re going to lose your chickens.”
Perched along a small river that runs into San Pablo Bay, Petaluma became an agricultural exporter during the Gold Rush; only the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers served as larger waterways for transporting goods. A local dentist, Isaac Dias, invented the egg incubator in 1878, helping rocket the production of eggs to approximately 100 million a year by 1900, according to Petaluma historian John Patrick Sheehy.
The invention allowed egg farmers to reach new heights in production, but there was a limit, as hens were not receiving enough calcium to form egg shells, Sheehy said. Christopher Nisson, a Danish immigrant to Petaluma with an entrepreneurial spirit, found the solution in 1880: A mound of calcium-rich oyster shells in the south of San Francisco Bay that could be ground up and mixed with chicken feed.
“Nisson purchased a few of the incubators to launch the country’s first commercial egg hatchery in Two Rock,” Sheehy said. “And that essentially transformed chickens, which were seen as a pastoral farm animal, to being part of an egg assembly line.”
With the egg industry firmly entrenched as the marquee business of Petaluma – Marht said approximately 90% of residents contributed to commercial egg production – the city leaned into its image through the promotional flash and flare of Bert Kerrigan, secretary of Petaluma’s Chamber of Commerce.
“He started National Egg Day. He had an egg parade, he had an egg queen, he had an egg ball, he had an Egg Day rodeo of hens and horses,” Sheehy said. “He had staged a chicken race down San Francisco’s Market Street that was accompanied by a biplane dropping chicken feathers [affixed] with coupons for free Petaluma eggs. He’s the one who really put Petaluma on the map as the World’s Egg Basket.”
By 1930, Petaluma produced more than half a billion eggs a year, and shipped them across California, as well as the rest of the country and even internationally, Sheehy said. The onset of the Great Depression and food rationing during World War II further boosted Petaluma’s egg market as Americans sought more affordable protein sources, and eggs were golden.
“They were going all across the country by rail,” Marht said. “Petaluma was the egg capital of the world. it moved more eggs than anywhere else.”
But the advancements in refrigeration, transportation and electricity in the 1950s and 60s allowed the industry to move inland, where affordable land was plentiful, Marht said.
“That’s what really pushed it to the Central Valley of California,” Marht said. “And then, once it really took off, it pushed it all out to the Midwest, right next to where all the corn and all the feedstocks were.”
The bird flu, rising costs, and the growing market share of corporate egg producers have threatened to destroy Petaluma’s egg legacy entirely.
“We have a massive emotional investment. We’re chicken first, right? If the chicken’s not taken care of, then we won’t be taken care of,” Marht said. “It is our absolute priority to make sure that they are healthy and happy, because a stressed chicken does not lay an egg.”
The egg farms have invested millions of dollars to fight the avian flu. Petaluma Egg Farm has erected lasers that shoot over its fields and barn area to deter wildfowl from encroaching on its flock. Farm workers are required to change into separate uniforms before entering any chicken barn. The farm has even banned visitors to mitigate the spread.
“It’s a very labor-intensive process to try and keep the chickens safe,” Marht said. “Every farmer wants to do the best thing possible for its animals to make sure that they’re happy and that they produce, because at the end of the day, we are in the business of eggs, in providing customers eggs and making sure the chickens stay healthy.”
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