Pictured:  Jody and Bill Brockberg with their dog Buddy by their calf barn on their dairy farm which is located approximately five miles west of Edgerton.

By Jill Fennema –

Bill and Jody Brockberg do dairy the old-fashioned way. While some dairy farms have hundreds or even thousands of cows, the Brockbergs are milking 50 cows a day, in much the same way as Bill’s father did 40 years ago.

The roots of the Brockberg Dairy go back to March 1922, when Bill’s grandparents, Frank and Louise Brockberg, moved to the farm. They were a young married couple, both having grown up in families that immigrated to the United States from Germany. Bill thinks they had about a half dozen milk cows at that time. They had all the other regular farm livestock, too – like a few pigs, some chickens, a garden, and a crop in the field.

Frank and Louise had five children: Harvey, Melvin, Ivan, Vida, and Eunice. Melvin, born in 1925, would be the one who would eventually take over the farm. Melvin attended country school in District 42. He enlisted in the United States Army and served during the Korean War as a corporal. He completed his high school education while in the army and received his diploma in 1950. He was honorably discharged in 1951.

On June 19, 1955, Melvin married Dorothy Totman in the Presbyterian Church in Pipestone, Minnesota. Dorothy and Melvin would run the family farm for the next 50 years. They had four children: David, Gary, Kathy Hachmann, and Bill.

When Bill was younger, they had stock cows, hogs, chickens, and 30 to 40 dairy cows. As the dairy grew, they discontinued the other livestock and focused on dairy. When he was in high school his dad gave him an ultimatum of sorts.

“You can be in sports, but if you do, the cows will go,” his dad said. Bill said no to sports and yes to cows. He graduated from Edgerton Public High School in 1984 and went right into partnership with his parents. They did that for 20 years and then Bill married Jody in 2005, and they bought out Melvin and Dorothy.

Jody is from the Twin Cities area. She was a legal secretary in downtown Minneapolis. Bill and Jody met through some relatives and knew each other for many years before they got married. After they were married, Jody continued to work at the law firm, commuting back and forth for a while, but eventually she stopped that and now helps Bill on the dairy every day.

Jody was somewhat familiar with farm life. She had relatives in Stearns County that were dairy farmers and she had spent summers there.

“Working together with your best friend, and watching the sunrises and the sunsets together, you feel a part of ‘God’s country’ with all the miracles of nature,” Jody said of life on the farm. “That’s what makes it all worth it.”

Bill and Jody have about 50 cows on the dairy right now. They milk them in a tie stall barn. This means the cows all wear a halter strap around their neck and they are tied in the barn during milking via a 2-foot chain. They have rubber mats that they stand or lay on in the barn and those are covered with straw bedding. All of the cows get let out for fresh air and exercise every day. While they are in the barn, the cows listen to country music!

Jody feeds the cows while Bill milks them. The cows are milked two times per day and that process takes about two hours.

Bill uses individual cloth towels on the cows for cleaning before each milking, so there is a washer and dryer in the barn for washing those. Jody said that most of the cows will still just stand calmly in their stall while they are being milked, regardless of whether the chain is tied or not. Most of the cows just automatically file to their stall for each milking, but occasionally there are one or two who need to be guided to the correct stall; that’s especially true of new heifers who have never been in the milking barn before.

Bill and Jody component feed their cows – which means that they give them their various feeds separately rather than all mixed in one ration. The cows eat ground ear corn, alfalfa haylage, ground soybeans, corn silage, long dry hay, and a mixture of minerals and vitamins called top dress. Each cow eats around 80 pounds of feed per day. They are fed three times a day – morning, noon, and night.

Bill explained that he prefers component feeding because then he can easily control the ration of each individual cow. So if he has an older cow that he wants to feed less he can do that or if he wants to feed a young cow more to help her produce more and higher quality milk, he can do that.

“We take a lot of pride in our place and our herd,” Bill said. “We take care of our cows, too.” Happy cows produce more and better milk. In addition to the care that they receive at the hands of the Brockbergs, the state inspector comes out twice a year to make sure that everything at the barn is as it should be and a federal inspector does the same every 18 months.

“I’d put the quality of my milk up against any,” Bill said. The milk from Brockberg Dairy is marketed through National Farmers. Legler Milk Hauling out of Woodstock hauls their milk, which is stored in a 1,000 gallon bulk tank until it’s picked up. The milk is sold to Agropur in Lake Norden, South Dakota, where it is made into cheese.

Bill says that one of his main goals is quality milk. Whereas the average Holstein milk cow will produce milk with 3.3 to 3.5 percent butterfat, his cows consistently produce 4.4 percent butterfat.