Published 7:00 am Thursday, January 16, 2025
JEROME, Idaho — Noah and Becka Hendricks have a dream to raise animals and produce eggs, meat and breeding stock with one of them working full-time on their small acreage.
They moved west from their native Illinois in 2018 for a job opportunity for Noah at Burley’s ethanol plant — then operated by Pacific Ethanol, his employer in Illinois. He’s since worked as a plant manager for Scoular in Jerome and now works for Magic Valley Growers in Wendell.
After finishing her master’s degree in plant science at the University of Idaho, Becka stayed on at the Kimberly Research and Extension Center doing potato storage research.
In 2021, the couple bought a few alpacas and chickens and got busy settling into farm life and growing their business — Hendricks Homestead.
They had built up to 600 laying hens, 500 chicken meat birds, 32 ducks, about 60 quail, 17 alpacas, 13 yaks and 2 guard llamas.
“Our main thing that we sold were eggs to local markets,” Becka said.
They had a lot of customers and were gearing up their chicken meat bird business and trialing yak meat at a local high-end restaurant.
“Everything we were doing was pasture-raised,” she said.
They moved the four-legged animals every day to fresh grass, and the poultry roamed the entire property. The business was expanding, and everything seemed to be going smoothly.
Then bird flu hit.
That was in early May. They lost 1,100 chickens and 32 ducks. The quail escaped the farm before the outbreak. Some of the alpacas contracted the flu as well — they lost one and had five aborted pregnancies.
They started losing birds on May 4 and reported the deaths the next day. They didn’t know the cause, but knew they needed to get on top of things. Less than a week later, they had lost 400 chickens and USDA and Idaho State Department of Agriculture depopulated the remaining flock as well as all the ducks.
It spread so quickly, Becka said.
“It was the hardest thing to watch. … It’s like watching something slowly suffocate, and you can’t do anything about it,” she said.
They hadn’t brought in any new birds and hadn’t been on any premises with poultry.
Health officials narrowed it down to wild bird transmission, Noah said.
The farm was their long-time goal, and the reason for the farm was to provide high-quality food locally. They wanted to build a network of small, local producers to benefit everyone with such things as buying supplies in bulk and coordinating shipments to butchers or market. Their business grew faster than expected, and it was really exciting, Noah said.
“Right now we’re in scatter mode, still figuring out losses and filing paperwork,” he said.
They’re just trying to figure out how to keep the business afloat, he said.
Indemnity payments don’t even cover the cost of buying the birds. And because the pastures can’t be sterilized, they’ll have to wait four months to repopulate. It will be a year after that before they’ll have eggs, and meat will be at least seven months out.
“The scary thing about the virus is it can come back,” he said.
Despite that uncertainty, they said they would continue to operate in a pasture-based system because it gives the animals a better quality of life and produces a higher-quality product.
Hendricks Homestead
Owners: Noah and Becka Hendricks
Ages: Noah 36, Becka 28
Location: Jerome, Idaho
Products: Pasture-raised chicken and eggs, duck eggs, quail eggs, yak meat and alpaca fiber.
Day jobs: Becka is a plant science research associate, University of Idaho Kimberly Research and Extension Center. Noah is a food safety and safety coordinator, Magic Valley Growers.
Educations: Becka has a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies, Eureka College, 2017; a master’s degree in plant science, University of Idaho, 2021. Noah has a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry, Monmouth College, 2010; and master’s degree in chemistry, Colorado State University, 2012.
