HPAI leaves Kakadoodle Farm looking for ‘what’s next’

By RHIANNON BRANCH

FarmWeek

Cook County farmer Marty Thomas was scheduled to speak about “How to scale your egg business” at the 2025 Everything Local Conference, but an outbreak of avian influenza just two weeks prior changed what he chose to share with fellow producers.

In 2021 Thomas and his wife, MariKate, established Kakadoodle Farm, an online farmer’s market for a variety of local produce designed to meet the convenience needs of modern consumers. They moved to a farm raising 3,000 pasture raised hens to provide eggs for the marketplace.

Last month, birds on their farm with little to no symptoms began dying and, despite the couple’s best efforts, the entire flock was diminished within a week. The determined cause was highly pathogenic avian influenza.

“I think one of the hardest things for me was wondering, ‘What are people going to think? Are we going to lose our business?” Thomas told FarmWeek.

But his fears were quickly eased as loyal customers reached out. “MariKate and I have been brought to tears daily because of the outpouring of support from our customers and community.”

The outbreak resulted in significant financial losses, but the diversity of their business model will allow them to move forward.

**Editor’s Note: If you find the story here of value, consider clicking one of the Google ads embedded in the story. It costs you nothing but Google will give the website owner a few cents. This is a way to help support local news at no cost to the reader.

“We are fortunate that we are not just producers,” he said, noting that the required 120-day quarantine would be detrimental if eggs were their only income. “For us, though, the revenue generating side of our company is the online marketplace.”

Thomas said while the situation has been devastating and emotional, they choose to look on the bright side.

Kakadoodle Farms recently made goals to scale back the egg farm and focus more attention on growing the online marketplace in 2025.

“It was something that we were already moving forward with before this happened and so the silver lining is we don’t have a farm to take care of now,” Thomas said.

He said local media covering the outbreak also brought more attention to their business which has boosted visitors to their online marketplace in recent weeks.

“Those were the two things that we needed to do this year, and we weren’t quite sure how we were going to go about it,” Thomas said. “I would have never thought in a million years that this would have been the way, but here we are.”

Thomas is no stranger to disease and the influential outcomes it can have. Kakadoodle Farm itself is the product of inspiration Thomas found after a successful battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

But the HPAI outbreak has been a reminder of how faith and farming intertwine. Thomas recalled that just a week before the birds got sick their pastor spoke about how in tough times successful people don’t ask “Why me?” they ask, “What’s next?”.

Thomas said they are taking this situation and saying, “Man I never saw this coming, but here we are, so what’s next?”.

Following the quarantine, Thomas said they plan to reintroduce birds to the farm while continuing to grow the marketplace side of the business and they are excited to see where it leads. His message for attendees of the conference can be best described in a quote Thomas said in a FarmWeek feature of their business back in July.

“I’ve learned nothing really works out the way you think it will, but if you just give up when you get hit a couple of times, you’re never going to accomplish what you want to do.”

This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visit FarmWeekNow.com.