- Wayne Hawkins - Circle H Farms, Frances
In May this year (2015) Wayne and Sally Hawkins, Circle H Farms, Frances were ‘blown away’ when announced as the JBS Great Southern Lamb Producer of the Year winners in a gala awards evening at the Crown Casino in Melbourne. The JBS Farm Assurance Program is the largest of its kind in Australia with over 2000 grass-fed beef and lamb suppliers whose stock go into JBS’s Great Southern brand.
For Wayne and Sally Hawkins, family and staff, their winning recipe is good genetics, good dams with maternal instincts and fertility, feeding well and measuring everything to make sure it meets the specifications. Following that recipe is the harder part, especially when lamb production, as significant as it is with 7000 to 8000 lambs marketed annually, is the minor enterprise to cropping on their 3000 hectare property.
They are meticulous in their attention to detail with everything weighed at weaning and again after the first draft is sold. Lambs must be spot on for both weight and fat score. This might explain their JBS win based on a 96.5% compliance rate with grid specifications.
They are running 5500 Dohne ewes, but a transition is underway. They now have 500 Dohne/White Suffolk cross ewes and plan to move their whole breeding flock to this composite mix.
“I really like the way these crossbreds get up and go straight away. From a maternal perspective, the White Suffolk cross ewe lambs are generally a little leggier and cleaner pointed, giving us management advantages,” Wayne said.
Thus they have purchased mainly White Suffolk rams in the last couple of years to build up ewe replacement numbers. With their muscling and carcase composition attributes, Poll Dorset rams go over the Dohne/White Suffolk composites.
The Circle H Farms’ lambs are mostly marketed from late September onwards through their JBS buyer Grant Wood (who was awarded the JBS Lamb Buyer of the Year) and with the assistance of Elders agent Tom Dennis. Any carryover or later drop lambs are finished on bean stubbles and are marketed in January/February, with an opportunist feedlot also available if needed.
Despite this being the peak lamb supply period in southern Australia, they averaged from $125 to $140 for their 8000 finished lambs in 2014. With such a result it is easy to see why the Hawkins family was announced as the Great Southern Lamb Producer of the Year.
Circle H Farms select their rams from the Funke family’s Bundara Downs stud at Western Flat and again use the services and advice of Tom Dennis.
“They have both breeding options, full performance data and clearly rank with the best. Growth is the most important trait we pay attention to, but their rams work really well and produce rapid growing lambs that consistently hit our grid target weights of 22 to 24kg with the right condition scores of 2.5 to 3.5,” Wayne said.
“When you’re on a winning genetic combination, why question or change it,” he added.
