Modesto plant supplies squab, and it’s not your common pigeon

Chinese people launched the Year of the Rooster on Saturday, with help from a Modesto business that deals in a quite another kind of poultry.

Squab Producers of California is at its busiest for Chinese New Year gatherings in San Francisco and other locales. The 34-employee plant just east of Crows Landing Road is the nation’s largest supplier of the young pigeons, raised on 65 farms from Fresno to Red Bluff.

“It’s one of the tastiest, tenderest meats that you can get,” President Dalton Rasmussen said Friday at a farm southwest of Turlock. He spoke over the cooing of a few thousand squab housed in open-sided barns over their 30-day lives.

Stanislaus County produced 441,991 squab last year, worth an average of $5.26 apiece, according to its agricultural commissioner’s office. The $2.33 million in gross income was less than 1 percent of the $366 million total for chicken and turkey, but fans of the fancy fowl could not get enough.

“The demand for squab far exceeds the supply, which is a good thing,” said Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation, based in Modesto. “It’s a dark meat, and it’s got a lot of flavor if cooked properly.”

Much of that demand comes from “white tablecloth” restaurants in New York City, Chicago and other places, Rasmussen said. Most of the product is consumed in the United States or Canada.

Squab is rarely found in grocery stores or restaurants in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, but it can be ordered at www.squab.com and shipped frozen. It is pricey — $68 for four birds of about a pound each, $71 for a semi-boneless version.

And no, these are not the common pigeons of urban areas, but a refined game bird with a long history.

“It used to be known as the meat of kings because it was served to royalty all the way back to the Egyptian days,” Rasmussen said.

Surla’s Restaurant in downtown Modesto serves squab for special occasions a few times a year, owner John Surla said. He has barbecued it, stuffed it into ravioli and served it grilled with risotto.

“I think it’s the filet mignon of game birds,” he said.

Squab Producers of California is a farmer-owned cooperative founded in Hayward in 1943. It moved to Modesto in 1983.

The plant, which is inspected often by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, also processes specialty chickens for outside growers. As in all poultry plants, workers wear protective attire and still do much of the work with knives.

Male and female squab mate for life and share in the care of their young. A typical pen houses 20 pairs in wooden boxes above a dirt floor. They eat mostly corn, which can get expensive at times, and need fresh water.

“They produce better when they’re happy, so that’s what we try to do,” Rasmussen said.

This story was originally published February 7, 2017 at 4:26 PM with the headline "Modesto plant supplies squab, and it’s not your common pigeon."