In Marketplace for Gourmet Squab, Modesto’s Growers Rule the Roost
“Squab is the Cadillac of fowl, the meat of kings,” Robert Shipley opines. “Egyptian Pharaohs ate squab. So did the Ming Dynasty emperors of China and the royal families of medieval Europe.”
And, without much notice, this Central California city has become America’s squab capital. The 48 members of the Modesto-based Squab Producers of California cooperative sold 400,000 young pigeons last year under the King Cal label, or about 36% of the nation’s output. The cooperative grossed $2.5 million last year, including $1.6 million worth of squabs and $900,000 of pheasants, ducks and chukar (partridge).
Still, says Shipley, the cooperative’s general manager, most Americans know almost nothing about the squab, and 90% of the public has never tried it.
“Squab isn’t found in your corner grocery store or nearby supermarket. A few gourmet shops may feature it as a specialty item, but you really have to look for it,” he says.
Nearly half of the pigeons grown here are sold to markets and restaurants featuring Chinese food. Most of the rest go to gourmet or “white tablecloth” restaurants. About 10% are exported.
His birds are most definitely not park pigeons, insists Shipley, 36. Those birds are “tough are nails,” he says, while squab meat melts in your mouth.
Squab are 28- to 30-day-old broad-breasted nestling pigeons with limited muscle development because they have never flown. Dressed out, they weigh 14 to 16 ounces each.
Nearly all of California’s squab producers are in the San Joaquin Valley. Most are small operators with as few as 200 pairs of breeders; the largest own 2,500 pairs.
The cooperative pays its growers $2.50 to $3 for each live bird and processes them at a Modesto plant that employs 22. At retail, Squab fetches $6 a pound.
“This is a farm product with remarkable stability, unlike poultry, livestock and most crops in recent years,” noted Chester Blocher, 75, a member of the cooperative for 20 years with his son-in-law, Ron Gish, 55.
The men have 87 pigeon lofts on their Modesto farm with 15 pairs of breeders in each loft. They gross more than $30,000 a year from their part-time squab business. Gish also works for Hershey Chocolate in nearby Oakdale, and Blocher is a retired grain harvester.
“This is an excellent money crop. We put in about 10 hours a week with the pigeons, that’s it,” Blocher says.
Some pairs produce as many as 17 young a year, Gish says, and average yearly output per pair at the farm is 13 nestling pigeons.
“They mate for life and average five years as productive birds,” Gish explains. “These pigeons are remarkable in many ways. Male and female take turns sitting on the eggs and feeding the young.”
Shipley claims that demand far exceeds supply.
“It is better that way. It keeps the price up. This is a very healthy industry.”
The Modesto cooperative is the only one of its kind in the United States, he says, and its success has been noticed elsewhere.
The Chinese, he says, have been seeking to purchase thousands of breeders from the California cooperative to upgrade their stock.
“We have turned them down because we don’t have enough breeders of our own to meet the demand of Americans.”
