Commercial Profile – Hawkins Bros.

An hour southeast of Swift Current, on the prairie farmland of southern Saskatchewan, the community of Shamrock is home to the Hawkins Bros. family farm. While Shamrock may be but a dot on the map, the Hawkins Bros. farm is anything but small. The farm was originally established in 1918, earning the family their Century Family Farm Award in 2018. In 1970, patriarch of the operation, Tom Hawkins, passed away at only 54 years of age. Pat Hawkins was 22 years old at the time, the eldest of 12 children. The family had six quarters of land when Pat’s father passed away. Today, Hawkins Bros. own nearly all of their land. They seed 35,000 acres, calve 1,000 head of mother cows, and background up to 3,500 head in their home feedlot, with additional cattle custom fed at Red Coat Cattle Feeders in Hazenmore, Sask. If that wasn’t enough, they are also dealers for a number of agricultural products including salt and lick tubs and fence posts. They have their own seed cleaning plant that has proved to be a tremendous asset to the operation. There is even their own on-site butcher shop. Everything they have, they have built – and nothing is taken for granted. What’s more, the operation is run by a fraction of the manpower that most other enterprises of comparable size would be.

Four of the Hawkins Bros., Pat, Fred, Walter and Chris, still have roles on the farm today. Their brother Sam owns a funeral home business. Another brother, John, passed away 10 years ago. He had a chemical retail company which Hawkin Bros. took over and ran under the name of Hawks Agro for five years. Pat had four daughters and one son – Patrick Hawkins Junior. Patrick works alongside Fred’s son, Ryan, and Walter’s son, Jeff, as the fourth generations managing the day to day work on the operation. Also employed by the farm are Patrick’s brother in law, Devon, and Devon’s oldest son, Nikolis. Patrick’s father in law, John, runs the seed cleaning plant for them and another young man, Dryden, is the only other full time hired help. With a lot of irons in the fire, there is no time to waste on cattle that don’t do their job.

The Hawkins bought their first Limousin bull in 1987 and continued to do so off and on until 2002. It wasn’t until 2009, when they were hauling bales to J. Yorga Farms, that they ended up looking in the bull pens and were impressed by what they saw, so much so, that they have exclusively purchased JYF bull power ever since, often as the volume buyers of the sale. With 1,000 cows to cover, the Hawkins require a big bull battery. The majority of the bull pen are Limousin and Charolais bulls as pounds are priority to go into their backgrounding operation. Black Angus bulls are bred to their heifers and then kept as herd bulls when they mature. They have a handful of Hereford bulls to use over Charolais heifers and have tried a couple of Simmental bulls in their tan/red pastures. They try to sort their herd mostly into colour groups for various pastures. Of the crosses, they have been really impressed with their Limousin x Charolais replacement females, and how the frame size is brought down with that cross. They have also been pleased with how well the Limousin bulls are able to cover ground and cows, stamp their calves with extra muscle and pounds, and they tend to outlast bulls of other breeds in terms of longevity.

When it comes to buying Limousin bulls they have no preference between black or red, and in their operation, they don’t mind scurs. EPDs are a factor in their decision making but the visual appraisal of the animal is still of large importance. They aim to buy bulls with a birth weight under 90 pounds and a weaning weight over 1,150 pounds that are uniform front to back and have a reasonable demeanor when you go in the pen with them.

“As a rule, we don’t have any trouble calving them out, and you can tell the Limousin calves,” says Jeff, who is in charge of the management of the cowherd, “We try to buy low birth weight, good, top end bulls and we have to pay for them but we don’t have trouble with them and the calves gain good.”

Patrick goes on to say, “The days of the $2,500 bull are gone – that ship has sailed. You get exactly what it is you paid for – lots of trouble next spring.”

They have appreciated the sound advice that seedstock breeders like the Yorga’s have offered them when they are making their bull purchases.

“You have to stand behind your cattle on things that are within your control or you won’t be in the business long,” Patrick comments. The Hawkins appreciate that interest is shown in their program and how their bulls are performing. It also means a lot to them that they can consider the people they are purchasing from to be their friends and that they are supporting another family run operation like their own.

Their own operation is at the stage where they are trying to maintain their current enterprises with the older generation beginning to slow down and the younger generation just starting to become more involved. Like most farm families, this shift is gradual, and not without its difficulties.

“To bring a cow guy in that would be like our fathers,” Patrick and Jeff both agree, “we would need two or three guys to be like each of them.”

Pat Sr. heads up the feeding operation with Patrick, and Walter, Jeff’s dad, does most of the pasture checking over the summer. Their cousin Ryan and his father Fred are integral to the operation, as is their uncle Chris.

“Uncle Chris is at the lot every day and he feeds everything, he can pick a sick one out better than anyone,” says Jeff, “You can’t put a price on a guy that can read the cattle and know what’s what.”

With children in their early teens, Patrick and Jeff are keen to see their kids take an interest in the farm, but it also comes with some apprehensions.

“We used to run the cultivator when we were 10 or 11 years old and now we don’t even think of letting the kids do those things,” Patrick says, “Now mistakes cost so much. Everything is bigger and there are timelines more so. They’re a lot more timid than we were and they’re not going to push their way past anyone to be the first one there.” Their hope is that their children can find their niche within the operation as they have, and continue the legacy the family has built.

The cowherd is overwintered on silage in two groups, one at Jeff’s yard and one at Ryan’s place. Calving starts around the 20th of March. In the often still cold temperatures, they appreciate the extra spunk that the Limousin calves have to get up, nurse and thrive without assistance. Any cows that are due to calve late are ear tagged differently at pregchecking time and those females have to calve on pasture on their own. All of their calves go into their backgrounding operation, with steers and heifers purchased from a number of other ranches to fill the lot. Additional cattle go for custom feeding. The farm owns three cattle liners so they are able to haul all of their own loads. They start shipping 900 weights in January with the goal to have the lot empty by the end of February. Calving on the earlier side has helped the Hawkins family meet these timelines and Limousin influence in their calves has paid off in achieving calves that are heavier going into the lot.

“You notice when you’re weaning, they seem to have that extra muscle. They don’t always look like it and you might think they’re not as big but they surprise you when you put them across the scale. They wean really nice,” Patrick comments, “We want healthy cattle that grow. We don’t want them to be around very long in the lot, we want them gone. They need to be 900 to 1,000 pounds in the first two and a half months of the year. If they’re not meeting that, that’s when we’re disappointed. Our weaning weights have been better with Limousin bulls.”

The Hawkins family stopped finishing out their cattle 20 years ago and have stuck strictly to backgrounding instead.

“We’re getting them to where they want them to be so they can put them on full feed,” says Jeff. Last year, all of their backgrounded calves were purchased by one feedlot near Lethbridge.

“I do know a lot of the guys buying like the Exotic type cattle more than the British,” Patrick commented, “They’re yielding more – they always bring more money,” he goes on to say, “you bring a nice group of Exotic blacks in there and they see they have Limousin in them, they’ll bring a few cents more because they’re going to yield more.”

The operation owns 100 quarters between Shamrock and Moose Jaw. All of their big pastures are cross fenced so they can rotationally graze their cow groups. They typically have a spring section, three summer sections and fall grazing section and try to keep the stocking density to 15 acres per cow. Flood irrigation allows them to flush all of their dugouts which is a concern as last year they had 100 females that didn’t breed back due to bad water.

The infrastructure around the feedlot is impressive. In June of 2005, a tornado wreaked havoc on the farm. Their barn was destroyed, a grain leg was ripped down and fell on a tractor, and numerous animals were injured and killed. The barn was rebuilt and their processing facility now includes a grated floor, so manure drops down, and a homebuilt squeeze system. Their feedmill sits central to the operation and a truck shop, finished last year, is the newest addition to the main yard. In 2017 they built their own seed cleaning plant and in the first two years of operation over 1.2 million bushels have been run through it. Patrick designed the plant with a drive over pit that can unload trucks at 10,000 bushels an hour with no augers. It can be run by one person alone and Patrick can even operate it off of his phone. There is dual screening to separate lights and heavies for the pet food market. Most impressive of all is that last year they only bought eight loads of feed grain for the 3,000 head of cattle they had in the feedlot. Nearly all of their feed grain was dockage from their own grain that they cleaned through the plant.

Seizing opportunities and diversifying has undoubtedly played into the success of their operation.

There isn’t much that the Hawkin family hasn’t done. Even through hardship, the family has put their heads down, pulled together and come out on top. Agriculture is in their blood and they’re in it for the long haul.