Hoskins Cattle Company has a long history in Arkansas
CHELSEA, OKLA. – Chris and Ashley Hoskins continually claim they didn’t do anything special.
The family farm, Hoskins Cattle Company, however, is something special as it was named the 2023 District 6 Farm Family of the Year.
“We were very fortunate, humbled to be picked,” Chris said. “We’re not a large-scale full-time operation. Yes, we go back several generations. Our roots are deeply rooted in agriculture and farming, but we’re not sitting on a fifth-generation farm and farming land that was homesteaded by our grandparents or great-grandparents. A lot of people, I guess would say were part-time farmers, but I’m not sure that’s a thing. If you work at it, it’s a full-time job on top of your full-time jobs. So was just very humbled to be even considered and recognized for that.”
Each year each of the nine districts in the Oklahoma Farm Bureau nominates a family to be recognized annually at their convention. The Hoskins Cattle Company took home the honor for their district this year.
The Hoskins are proud of the work they have done not just on their farm, but for the community as well.
“To see that our contributions to agriculture are recognized is humbling. We both actually work for Rogers County Farm Bureau and do a lot of advocacy things with them and agricultural education,” Chris said. “She’s [Ashley] one of the 4-H leaders here in our community. We both do a lot with the 4-H and FFA in our local community here. The two of us also helped with a program where kids teaching them how to commercially feed these animals out and finish these animals and teach them about nutrition and a little bit about marketing, how to sell them and how to raise and take care of them. And we just try to help advocate for agriculture.”
Both Ashley and Chris grew up in Northeast Oklahoma farming and raising cattle. A couple of years after they were married in 2011, they started building up a cow herd and buying cows. Then in 2015 they teamed up with a family friend and began helping him with his operation as they started the Hoskins Cattle Company.
“We own 50 acres and lease another 150. And we’ve got about 30 head of cows ourselves,” Chris said. “The gentleman that we still help him do things with, he’s got about 100 head or so of his own. We share a lot of resources and help each other work. We purchase equipment together that way we’re we can do a little more with less, so to speak.”
From the start the Hoskins ran a normal cow/calf operation with primarily Angus bulls and Angus-influenced cows and some Hereford crosses. Then when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they were called upon by their neighbors to start diversifying.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the markets kind of bottomed out and the cattle got to where they were very undervalued if you took them straight to market, we held onto a few of them to see what we might do,” Chris said. “We thought we’ll feed them a little longer and sell them later when they’re bigger or something. And had several people come to us during that time who wanted us to finish them out because at that time people became very concerned about their food and where it was coming from. All the things that kind of happened between March and into the end of 2020, people were scared about where their food was coming from. So we kind of shifted where we still have our cow/calf operation, but we also have, I call it a freezer beef operation where we sell orders halves and holes to individuals in and around the area.”
The Hoskin’s freezer-beef operation has grown each of the past three years. According to Hoskin’s they sold beef to nearly 30 families last year.
According to Chris, the fact they can provide a background for the cattle they sell and can guarantee it’s hormone-free is a selling point.
Hoskins Cattle Company provides 12 to 15 beefs for direct sales to customers.
“We would love to do more than that. The biggest thing for us is quantity doesn’t always equal quality and we want to be able to maintain the quality that we produce,” Chris said. “I don’t want somebody to get something they’re not happy with. This year already, we’re getting the calves ready to send through for next year. I think we’ve got six sold for next year already and have another four in the pen right now. So just in the first half of the year, we’re looking to try to sell 10 in the first half of this coming year and might be able to get that to two a month.”
