As sure as the prairie winds blow, Rob Hamilton has stood in the northwest corner of the show ring for the finale of Canadian Western Agribition year after year.
The supreme finale showcases all the grand champion bulls and females from Agribition, held Nov. 21-28 in Regina, and 15 other North American shows.
This year, five judges recognized Rob and Gail Hamilton of Cochrane, Alta., for their two-year-old Angus bull and friends and competitors Lee and Dawn Wilson of Bashaw, Alta., for their Angus cow-calf pair. Both sets of animals were also Agribition grand champions.
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Prizes included $10,000 in cash and almost an equal amount in gift certificates and other prizes.
The two families won the supreme championship at Edmonton’s Farmfair two weeks earlier.
The Wilson children, Ty, Dakota and Jaelyn, were also on hand for the win because “the whole family owns her,” said a jubilant Dawn Wilson. Every member of the family grooms and shows cattle throughout the year with winning results.
The family last won this event with a two-year-old bred heifer at Agribition in 1999.
“This is phenomenal. This is as good as it gets,” Lee Wilson said.
“We brought eight head and she was the highlighter.”
The prize cow, DMM Miss Essence 21R, is going into a flushing program and the heifer calf will be shown at the Western National Stock Show in Denver in mid-January.
Agribition is always a showcase event for the Hamiltons, who run about 400 cows on their foothills ranch.
Gail Hamilton partly credited their winning ways to luck, but said they also put considerable thought into raising their cattle with the HF brand on the hip.
“We use a lot of our own bulls. There are basically three sire groups,” she said following the Angus Masterpiece sale, at which they sold two-thirds interest in a bull calf for $25,000 to Steve Harvey of Chute Creek Angus in Penticton, B.C. The calf was sired by the supreme champion, HF Tiger 5T.
Bulls with names like Tiger, Kodiak and Hemi dominate the breeding program.
The Hamiltons also run a carefully controlled line breeding program when raising their own females. They are looking for consistent cattle wanted by purebred and commercial people.
“We try hard to breed good, functional cattle and keep our cow families line bred for consistency,” she said.
The predictability they desire can be easily lost if too many new cows are introduced from other herds. They sell only 30 heifer calves per year in their annual sale but will offer 140 bulls Dec. 14.
The Hamiltons work full time on the ranch with help from one employee. Their three sons have been drafted into the Western Hockey League, which has become a passion for the entire family.
As avid fans, the bulls have taken on the names of their sons’ teams. Tiger is named for the Medicine Hat Tigers and an earlier supreme champion and Tiger’s sire was named after the Camrose Kodiaks.
