After a four-month ordeal with bird flu, live ducks are finally returning to Long Island’s last commercial duck farm.

Crescent Duck Farm President Doug Corwin on Tuesday said the USDA on May 12 lifted the final quarantine of his 140-acre farm in Aquebogue, after 500 recent samples taken of his barns came back negative. A letter approving restocking of the farm came shortly thereafter.

Crescent lost nearly all its flock to avian flu in January, which led to the euthanization of nearly 99,000 birds. On Monday, Corwin and a team of family members helped transport the first 900 young ducks from their temporary home at Miloski’s Poultry Farm in Calverton back to the more than century-old family farm. Nearly three dozen ducks will be tested over the next three weeks to make sure the farm is cleared of avian flu.

Corwin was able to salvage thousands of eggs from the original Crescent stock to restart operations. After months of sanitizing, testing and incubating, the ducks are now about 12 weeks old. When they reach 26 weeks, they will begin laying around five eggs a week, enough to help restock farm operations, where most barns are vacant.

Another separate flock of about 1,800 Crescent ducks are being raised in a location in Eastport. They will be shipped back to Aquebogue in coming weeks after tests come back from the first generation returned to the farm.

Patience and care are part of the procedure Corwin said he’s learned to live by as he’s worked to restore operations after the devastating loss of January. "Step by step we are pushing forward," he said.

He continues to restore and upgrade the farm, making repairs while the ducks have been away, while increasing biosecurity measures.

Corwin said he expects to have some 1,700 females laying eggs by summer. He needs some 8,000 to 10,000 females regularly laying eggs to begin larger scale operations. He won’t begin raising, processing and selling duck meat until next year.

Reminders abound that problems can crop up. On Monday he noted, the USDA reported a bird flu outbreak at a commercial farm in Arizona, resulting in the euthanization of about 2.2 million egg-laying chickens. 

He won’t let down his guard in Aquebogue. "I’ll stay busy doing enhanced maintenance and upgrading of our facilities," he said.