TURNER – State police have been called in to investigate a rash of vandalism at the DeCoster egg farms.

Safety and compliance manager Bob Leclerc said chicken barns have been illegally entered at night at least three times this past week. Whoever came into the houses sabotaged chicken watering systems, allowing water to spray into the air all night.

Leclerc said affected barns are those with so-called deep pits, places where manure accumulates.

The running water ends up in pits, soaking the manure and making it more susceptible to fly infestation.

Got flies?

Bob Leclerc’s recipe for eliminating flies in your home:

• Keep your house clean

• Keep food scraps in sealed containers

• Keep garbage in tightly wrapped bags

• Clean trash cans regularly with soapy water

• Eliminate protective areas for fly larvae, such as tall grass

“Good housekeeping is the key,” he says.

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DeCoster’s battle plan

• Use baited fly traps, such as “Quick Strike”

• Use customized, employee-made baited fly tape “by the bucket full.”

• Use fly-specific contact poisons

• Use good housekeeping to eliminate places where flies congregate and lay eggs.

• Use ventilation to promote manure drying; quickly deliver manure to farmers elsewhere.

Employees say a relentless attack has eased egg farm pest problems.

TURNER – Say there are no flies on Bob Leclerc. He’ll smile.

“Life is good,” says Leclerc.

Good, as in good riddance to the hordes of flies that used to pester people living anywhere near the sprawling egg-farming operations on Plains Road.

As compliance manager for Maine Contract Farming, formerly DeCoster Egg Farms, it’s Leclerc’s job to keep flies to a minimum.

So far, he says, a combination of fly-fighting methods seem to be working this year.

“I’m hearing good things from my neighbors,” says Leclerc.

That’s music to his ears. Some of those neighbors have filed a lawsuit against the DeCoster spinoffs. They say fly infestations resulting from farming practices are a menace to their health. Odors coming from the manure storage facilities at the farms prevent them from enjoying their property, they add.

In March and April, the state Department of Agriculture listened to their complaints. Besides filing the lawsuit, which is pending in Androscoggin Superior Court, the neighbors wanted the state to rescind permits allowing the egg farm to operate.

That didn’t happen.

The lawsuit, though, remains, awaiting a trial date.

One plaintiff in the case, Ann Alexander, recently disputed Leclerc’s claimed improvement in conditions.

“We still have them,” she said of the flies. “It may be a little tiny bit better.”

Her husband, Michael, told state agriculture officials in March that “thousands of flies” have affected his health to the point where he’s been prescribed antidepressants.

The stench of manure stored at the farm, he also said, prevents him from opening his windows at night.

Two others involved in the lawsuit against DeCoster, Turner residents Katrina Morgan and Edna Richardson, didn’t immediately return calls.

Barns boss David Luna, like Leclerc, says he’s getting calls from neighbors praising the operation this year.

“They’re saying, Whatever you’re doing is working. Keep it up,'” Luna said.

Leclerc and Luna maintain there are fewer flies this year than in any of the three previous years that they’ve been on the job.

“We started earlier this year” managing flies, Leclerc explained – in January as opposed to March, which is when fly management began in 2003. “Much of what we’re doing this year we started last year,” he says, but the earlier start has proven to be more effective.

“It takes time” to control flies. “And we haven’t let up.”

Part of the effort involves communicating with neighbors.

When a father and son complained of flies a week ago, Leclerc said he brought the father to the middle of the fields surrounded by egg farming operations. They sat there, windows of the vehicle open.

“No flies,” said Leclerc.

He said he later investigated the men’s complaints further. He found a farmer spreading manure not far from where the two lived. That, he said, was the source of their flies, not the DeCoster operations.

He said other people have reported being bothered by blow flies, a ground-hatching species that also does not originate from the egg farm.

People, Leclerc said, can’t tell the difference between flies that might come from the egg farm and blow flies or flies that might come from another source.

Flies can’t be branded, he noted, “with a `D’ on their belly.”

Leclerc says a combined attack on flies using bait, fly tape by the truckload and “good housekeeping” is succeeding in stunting the insect population and reducing complaints.

The farm operation also is working hard to better manage its manure, he said. That includes shipping an estimated 235 tons of manure generated daily by 3.5 million laying hens to farmers for use on their fields.

Besides keeping the daily load of manure from accumulating, he says workers are cleaning out deep pits of older manure, getting it dried and ready for transport.

Luna, on a tour of the barns Thursday, showed off one section of deep pits with neat rows of dry manure.

He said he had some goals when he assumed authority to run the barns. “First came the people who work here,” he said. “Make them happy and they make better workers. Next comes the neighbors. Now, we’re making them happy, too.”

“We’re really trying to get better” at handling the birds’ byproduct, Leclerc said, and the effort is starting to pay off.

“We’re surprising people,” he added.

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