Consultants > Ray and Ellen Hankes
Ellen chuckles because when she married Ray, she thought she was marrying a college professor and their life would include multiple moves. Ray holds a bachelor and a master’s degree in agricultural science and animal science, respectively, and a PhD in meat science and ruminant nutrition. He served as an assistant animal scientist from 1969 to 1974 at the University of Illinois teaching, coaching and working in Extension. They married in 1970
Ray and Ellen Hankes are going home. After their respective careers have kept them on the road for the last 12 years, they are returning home to relatives, grandchildren and friends in central Illinois, while continuing their respective consulting careers that will carry them past retirement.
Ray retired last year from a corporate-style career with Tyson Foods, and its predecessor IBP, which took him and Ellen from Illinois across the Midwest to Dakota Dunes, SD, south to Nashville, TN, and then back north to Council Bluffs, IA.
Meanwhile, Ellen worked in a wide variety of executive and consulting positions.
Ellen chuckles because when she married Ray, she thought she was marrying a college professor and their life would include multiple moves. Ray holds a bachelor and a master’s degree in agricultural science and animal science, respectively, and a PhD in meat science and ruminant nutrition. He served as an assistant animal scientist from 1969 to 1974 at the University of Illinois teaching, coaching and working in Extension. They married in 1970.
But from the university job came an opportunity to return to the family hog operation Ellen grew up on, partnering with her father and brother.
Both Ray and Ellen were raised on diversified farming operations, Ray in northern Illinois and Ellen in central Illinois. A neighbor encouraged Ray’s father to enroll him in 4-H, and that turned out to be a huge part of his life. Science and agriculture were the two main tracks he pursued in high school. He was involved in livestock judging teams in high school and in college. While in college, he met Professor Waco Alberts, an intense, Christian man who taught him a lot about life and animals in his role as Ray’s collegiate judging team coach.
Ray also had a deep appreciation for Ellen’s dad, Howard Fugate. When Ray and Ellen joined the farming team in 1974, there were just two buildings on the farm to house pigs indoors. “My brother-in-law Bill Fugate and I would come up with an idea or propose something that was pretty different, and Ellen’s dad would say, ‘go for it,’” Ray recalls. “So we were part of the first wave of folks to move pigs indoors where they were more concentrated.”
The hog operation was called Thrushwood Farms, located at Fairbury, IL. Ray says the partners kept putting up buildings and growing the sow herd through the ’90s.
They started innovative marketing practices in the late ’70s. “We shipped hogs direct to packers without going to the stockyards,” he explains. “Most producers were going through buying stations, or in the case of central Illinois, going to the Peoria stockyards. By going direct, we got less shrink on our hogs and made better use of our transportation.” When the farm didn’t have a full pot load of hogs to market, they would split loads with area producers to fill out the load.