Bill & Gertie Hickman
Avondale- Maricopa County
Inducted in 2009
Many urban communities have clubs or groups that gather and share information and stories about raising chickens in their urban “south forties” (fee, not acres). This popular endeavor has its practitioners in Phoenix as well. We wonder how many realize that the six million bird population of Hickman’s Family Farm began as a small flock of laying hens? Those hens were in Nell Hickman’s backyard in the 1940s, 1944. Her passion for chickens was shared with her son Bill, who developed Hickman's Family Farms along with his new wife, Gertie. Their “egg-perience” founded a flourishing three-state enterprise and an Arizona tradition.
What started as a small block of laying hens in Nell Hickman’s backyard in the mid-1940s has grown into the largest egg producer in the Southwest. By 1993, Hickman’s Family Farms was the only Arizona egg producer with chickens and a USDA-inspected processing plant. Today, their facilities house more than six million birds in several locations.
As the name implies, Hickman’s Family Farms have been owned and operated by the Hickman family since it began in 1944. The Hickman family moved to Arizona from Kansas in 1938. Nell Hickman had a flock of laying hens on their small farm in Kansas and sold the eggs to neighbors and family. Her husband, Guy, was in construction. He helped build Bartlett Dam near Phoenix. Moving around the West, following heavy construction, was hard for the family, so in 1944, they settled in Glendale. Nell wanted a few chickens again, so Guy bought her a couple dozen birds, and she started selling the extra eggs.
Guy and Nell’s son Bill grew up around the family farm. When he and Gertie met, it was merging two different worlds. Gertie’s family came from Ohio. They were German and Dutch on her mother’s side and Mexican on her father’s. Her great-grandfather came from Spain via Mexico. Her grandmother was born at the mission of San Luis Obispo in California. Horses, not chicken, brought the Nunez family to Arizona. In the film industry's early days, the family raised Arabian horses for silent movies and westerns and supplied livestock for the film. Her grandmother and grandfather met and married in Phoenix. Bill and Gertie met while he was working at a Standard Station in Glendale, and she was a student at Arizona State College in Tempe (now Arizona State University). When they married in 1957, Bill dreamed of going into the egg business, so he asked his soon-to-be bride if she would help.
The couple bought 500 baby chicks and built their first chicken house. “I thought we’d purchased all the baby chicks in the world,” she laughed. “I’d never seen that many before.”
As the business grew, they partnered with Bill’s parents, a win-win situation for both. The arrangement worked fine at first. The men worked at their jobs while Gertie and her mother-in-law tended the chickens. When the bird count reached 10,000, Bill quit his job and became hands-on in the operations.
“Gertie started the delivery route, and she started selling so many eggs we are ere having trouble covering the eggs,” Bill remembers. “We decided to always sell our eggs instead of selling them to a distributor or dealer that would re-process them and then re-sell them. We’ve always sold our eggs from the time we started.”
Gertie’s route took her door-to-door. “There was money under rocks, door mats, around the corner. There were notes in cartons where to put the eggs to keep them out of the sun.” It was a different world. “My people were real good. If they didn’t have the money, they would say they’d pay double next time. They all knew me,” she said. “Then the babies started arriving, and we switched the routes to other people. In time, they went downhill. It wasn’t profitable for them, so we started selling milk to delivery milkmen. Principally Shamrock Dairy, stores, restaurants, vendors, and eventually distribution centers.”
In 1970, the Hickmans moved from the original ranch at 67th Avenue in Glendale to Missouri to one on 91st Avenue in Glendale. They bought the property to use as an expansion ranch, but encroachment and problems with the city of Glendale made the move from that property inevitable.
Several years ago, they bought land in Arlington and moved west. Today, they have two ranches in Arlington, offices on Jackrabbit Trail in Buckeye, a facility in Maricopa, and out-of-state operations in Colorado and California. Henrietta, the Hickman’s mascot, still proudly watches over the office from atop her pole on Jackrabbit Trail.
Today, Bill and Gertie have retired, leaving ownership and management of the company to their children. Glenn is the President and CEO, Billy is the Executive Vice President and General Manager, Clint handles marketing and merchandising, and Sharman, their daughter, is the public relations director. Matthew is in medical research and not involved in the business.
A fourth generation of Hickman is learning the business and will someday hopefully take their place in running the family-owned company.
