A cable hangs from a utility pole Monday near hen barns at Hillandale Farm in Turner. State Sen. Jeff Timberlake, R-Turner, confirmed Monday that the poultry farm ceased operating in December because “the cost of doing business in Maine is too much.” Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

TURNER — The Hillandale Farm shut down its poultry-raising facilities permanently last month, state Sen. Jeff Timberlake of Turner confirmed Monday.

Timberlake said he’d heard the news from upper management of the Pennsylvania-based company in August. “They told me back then that they were going to be ceasing operations in Maine. It’s lived up to be exactly what it was explained to me,” he said.

“Basically, they can’t afford to do business in Maine,” Timberlake said. “The cost of doing business in Maine is too much.”

Company officials could not be reached for comment Monday.

“It’s horrible because it’s gonna affect all farming in the state of Maine because there was an awful lot of dairy farmers around the state who used the chicken manure from Hillandale to spread on their cornfields to grow corn,” Timberlake continued. “Now they’re gonna have to buy that all in commercial fertilizer.”

Besides hay, dairy farmers grow corn, a key part of a cow’s diet and a great source of energy, according to usdairy.com.

A group of hen barns are seen Monday at Hillandale Farm on Plains Road in Turner. State Sen. Jeff Timberlake, R-Turner, confirmed Monday that the poultry farm ceased operating in December because “the cost of doing business in Maine is too much.” Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

According to Timberlake, the company originally planned to cease operations by the end of October. “The only reason they kept going for as long as they had was because of the Asian bird flu,” he said. “Somewhere around the 15th of December, they moved the last of 500,000 birds out of here, so there’s no birds left in Turner anymore.”

In 2015, when Hillandale took over the property, the facilities housed about 2.3 million birds. In 2024, the number had plunged to under 500,000. Properties belonging to Hillandale Farms, the town’s stable source of tax revenue for years, went from about $31 million to roughly $11 million within the same period.

“It’s been a struggle for them in the last few years because of, from what we understand, the cost of shipping feed to this area, which comes in by rail, and the increasing demand for cage-free eggs,” Town Manager Kurt Schaub said in September. “The facility in Turner is not a cage-free facility. It never has been.”

Schaub said Monday that the farm is “a series of complexes on a very, very large piece of land.” He cited information he found Monday that “portions of it have been in existence since some time prior to 1970.”  

The property is for sale, Timberlake said. “I know there’s been people around town that have looked at buying it and what you can do with it, but right now you can’t do anything with it because of the way it’s zoned.”

Under the existing zoning, the property can only be used for certain farming and industrial purposes. Housing is allowed only for farmworkers.

Last year, Hillandale Farm’s request to have its poultry farm rezoned from agriculture/industrial to rural 1 was rejected during the annual town meeting.