Clover Sonoma is a major California producer of milk, butter, and other dairy products. It supplies from at least 25 dairy farms in California and sells under the brand name Clover Sonoma. All Clover-supplying farms use calf crates to confine newborn cows, either on-site at the dairy or off-site at a calf-raising facility.

Despite the name Clover Sonoma, the company is majority-owned by the Colombian dairy corporation Alpina Productos Alimenticios, and it sources milk from multiple, large, feedlot-style dairy operations in the San Joaquin Valley, including Double D Dairies. Double D #2 received $1,855,759 in taxpayer funds for an outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza.

In 2026, Direct Action Everywhere documented abusive handling of calves at Agresti Calf Ranch in Stanislaus County, which raises calves born from dairy cows at Double D Dairies.

Agresti Calf Ranch | Stanislaus

DxE's footage at Agresti Calf Ranch shows:

• Calves being kicked in the face

• Calves exhibiting clear signs of pain in response to disbudding via hot iron, indicating lack of, or improper use of, anesthetic.

  Anesthetic is supposed to be injected 5-20 minutes before disbudding but over the course of 40 minutes of drone documentation, no workers were seen giving anesthetics to the calves before they were disbudded.

• Improper restraint of calves' heads in a manner that causes stress and pain, including pulling on nose pliers with full body force.

  This is absolutely against industry guidelines on disbudding that call for restraining calves in ways that minimize stress (See AVMA, Penn State Extension, Univ. of WI Madison, Cornell Extension, American Association of Bovine Practitioners, and industry leader Temple Grandin's condemnation of nose pliers/tongs ).

• Calves being pulled by their tails and ears, and having their tails twisted.

Mertens Dairy, one of Clover's suppliers in Sonoma County, confines cows on a barren dirt lot, with no access to pasture.

Mertens Dairy | Sonoma

This facility generates approximately 33 million pounds of animal waste annually, and stores it in a manure lagoon that is larger than two football fields. These lagoons release harmful greenhouse gases and can contaminate groundwater and destroy local ecosystems. Mertens specifically is located within the Sonoma Creek watershed, which is impaired due to bacteria, microbes, nitrogen, and/or phosphorus according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

You can see the locations of Clover Sonoma's California factory farms in the map below.