Dennis Dugan: Raising Cows – The Journey from Wisconsin to Arizona

GRANDE LIVING: How many generations of dairymen are in your family?

Dennis Dugan: My grandfather started the dairy operation in probably the 1880’s, 1890’s and then my dad took over in the 1940’s.

GRANDE LIVING: And were those the days where you would get up in the morning, do the milking and put the cans out by the road?

Dennis Dugan: Yes. In the early days when they were milking, the milk would be put in the cans, they would put the milk cans out on the road and that milk would be picked up and delivered to a cheese plant.

GRANDE LIVING: When did you enter the picture? At the farm back in Wisconsin?

Dennis Dugan: Yes. When we grew up in Wisconsin, our dad had us on a tractor when we were 6 years old. He would put us out in the field, by ourselves, with a small 65 horsepower tractor, on a disk with a hand clutch, because we weren’t big enough to touch the brakes, so we’d pull by hand clutch. All he would say was stay away from the fences and he’d leave us for two, three hours.

GRANDE LIVING: How many of your brothers are still in the business?

Dennis Dugan: All my brothers are still in the business except the one brother Richard Dugan. Richard was on a ski trip years ago when he hit some black ice on the road and wrecked. He hit his head and was in a coma for 10 days; he came out of it, but only recovered about 95% of his memory. He stayed involved and kept dairying for 10 years after that but then he sold out.

GRANDE LIVING: How many dairies are now at the Overfield Road facility in Casa Grande?

Dennis Dugan: There are three dairies there and another one just a half a mile down the road, so there are four actual facilities.

GRANDE LIVING: There’s also a Dugan dairy on the West side of the County as well?

Dennis Dugan: Yes, that’s my brother Tom; he’s the largest of us all. So there are five of us here and then I have a brother Mike who is dairying in Idaho.

GRANDE LIVING: Did you go to college?

Dennis Dugan: Yes, I went to UofA and graduated there 1972. Then, I went to Milwaukee, Oregon which is suburb of Portland. There was an ag teacher at the U of A that was from that area who told me about it and I wanted to get away and try something different. So I decided to go to Oregon. I went up there; I did that for a year and almost starved to death. I signed a $7,200.00 contract for twelve months in 1973.

GRANDE LIVING: What were you teaching? What grade?

Dennis Dugan: Freshmen through seniors in high school and I taught vocational agriculture.

GRANDE LIVING: After the year did you realize the error of your ways and came home?

Dennis Dugan: Yes. I quit and came home.

GRANDE LIVING: Are all of the twenty thousand cows we spoke of earlier here in Pinal County?

Dennis Dugan: Yes. Also, I think this is noteworthy — in 1980, Pinal County was ranked 232nd in the United States for number of milk cows in the county and today Pinal County is now ranked 18th in the United States. We have 90,000 milk cows within 30 miles of Casa Grande. We came that far in the dairy industry because of all the dairies built in Pinal County. Pinal County is in the top 20 dairy counties in the United States. Most people don’t realize that. The only reason the big dairy processing plants built by Ehrmann Yogurt plant, Franklin Cream Cheese, and Daisy happened was because there are ninety thousand milk cows within thirty miles of Casa Grande.

GRANDE LIVING: When you first got started in Casa Grande was it rough at first?

Dennis Dugan: Yes, but It was interesting… the people down here weren’t used to dairies. A dairy operation runs 24 hours a day and you have to have service 24 hours a day. The barns run 24 hours a day… So when I went to local businesses at that time when we were building the place, we got bids from the local people that handle the mechanical, coolers, whatever… and everything was higher here. All the bids came in higher, so most of all my construction guys had to come out of the Valley because of the lower bids. When I had to drill a well I told the well driller here, “if that well goes down on Christmas Eve you’re going to have to come out and pull that well… we can’t wait till the next morning for you to pull it out because we can’t be without water.” He said no, we don’t do that. So I had to go back up to the Valley and have a driller come down here because they offered 24 hour seven day a week service. It took a while, but eventually as the dairies came in, the business caught on. But I took a little heat when I first came down here because I wasn’t spending money locally, but today I’m doing a lot of business with local folks. I think I’ve changed and so have they.

GRANDE LIVING: Well it is a noble business.

Dennis Dugan: It’s hard work but we pay competitive wages and we reward those who do well. Our managers are making pretty good money. Four or five of our operators are making six figure salaries.

GRANDE LIVING: Do the dairies have their own veterinarians?

Dennis Dugan: Yes we have a vet.

GRANDE LIVING: With 20,000 head of cattle you must need a vet on call.

Dennis Dugan: Yes my brother Tom is the largest, he has 10,000 head and he has in-house vets. You still have outside vets that come in and the reason for that is because the outside vets go around to all the dairies and get to see what’s going on. If a disease comes in, they know how to handle it. The in-house vets are often from overseas, many from Africa and they work strictly in-house and therefore don’t know what’s going on at the other dairies and so forth.

GRANDE LIVING: Now you’ve become pretty successful. You’ve been at it since the ‘80s and you’re doing it pretty well. Now we are seeing your philanthropic side. Every town has nonprofit organizations and your name is affiliated with many of them, so you’re starting to get involved in the community.

Dennis Dugan: Basically our family’s Irish and when I was young, we would always take the day off and hold a big St. Patrick’s Day Party on St. Patrick’s Day. So when I got down here and I married my wife Kelly, we settled down and didn’t do that for years because there was a business to run and a family to raise. After a while my brother Tom and I started the celebration again probably about 17 years ago. Initially, we had our friends and family for lunch and we would celebrate the day. Well after 4 years, things started getting bigger and bigger, I turned it into a dairy event. We had all the dairymen get together to socialize. Later we got “sponsors”, the people who we did business with, and who sold supplies to each of our dairies. That was a lot of business and as a result, they would sponsor the party for awhile. It was just the dairymen and we had 180, 200 people and we raised enough money from our sponsors to cover the cost of the party. It was another way for the dairymen to socialize, it was a social event.

Well after a while, we had money left over from the party and we built up a reserve fund. I built up too much of a reserve fund and so, oh, four years ago, five years ago, over a two-year period, we gave $15,000 to the Boys and Girls Club because we didn’t need the excess money. Then I asked myself, what should be the next step? It’s a good cause, you’ve got all these people coming and our sponsors were growing, so we formed the Dugan’s St. Patrick’s Foundation. I hoped that every year we could raise $25,000 – $30,000 for the Boys and Girls Club. That was two years ago. The first year we netted $81,000 and it just blew me away. We gave $20,000 to the Boys and Girls Club, $20,000 for ag scholarships and then to kids in need in our community.

We kept enough money to help with the next year’s party. But again I asked myself, “What should be our next step?” I knew up in the valley, you have like five or six organizations like the Compadres, Thunderbirds and the Scottsdale Charros.

Between them they raise about $30 million a year. And most of the money goes to students, hospitals, the Boys and Girls Clubs and to different charities in the area. So I said “Why don’t we start one down here?” I thought we need it more than anybody else because we have 350,000 people in this county and the need here is great. So I got started and in May of 2014, we met at Golden Eagle Distributors. At that first meeting, we had about 25, 30 guys show up. I had the president of the Compadres make a presentation. And we talked to these 25 guys and we, you know, set things up. It took us three months to figure out a name and we settled on Pinal 40. At the present time, we are up to 38 members. Basically we already had an event with the St. Patrick’s Day party which I knew would raise money.

But then what we did was we turned it into a three-day event! Our idea was to bring all these dairy farmers in from all over the country. Then the corporate guys will follow. Rock is one of the members. You were too, Brett. The first year the event netted $184,000! We gave $135,000 of that away. $40,000 to Boys and Girls Club, $40,000 to ag scholarships, $10,000 FFA, $10,000 to the County Fair, $15,000 to various charities, and $20,000 to an endowment fund. So our goal is to eventually get 40 members. Each member has to raise $5,000. Personally, my goal is to have Pinal 40 raise a half a million dollars a year. There are a lot of great organizations in this town that need help. Our next step is to go out into corporate America to the big corporations who are involved in the dairy industry.

GRANDE LIVING: There was a period in your career a few years ago where you decided you needed to get into politics. Tell us about that.

Dennis Dugan: For about 10 or 12 years, I was involved with the St. Anthony’s School Board; then I got involved with the FFA and with a lot of help we took the FFA Steak Fry to a different level, which is great because it continues today. I was always involved in the community, community events, and so I thought, well, it’s time that I get involved in another way and I wanted to get involved with the county. I told myself “it’s part of giving back”. It certainly wasn’t for the salary, I think at that time it was $53,000. I was frustrated with what was going on at the county. And then when I started digging more and more into the county, and I discovered a tremendous amount of waste over there. I reviewed the budget for the last three years and grew irritated.

I said there’s … We need somebody in there that can make a difference and I figured that I could make a difference. And that’s primarily the reason I ran. I lost by, I think, 220 votes or so… It kind of hurts when you lose, but after six or eight months you move on. It turned out for the best.

GRANDE LIVING: (Laughs.) While I still have you, where did you meet your wife Kelly?

Dennis Dugan: When I came down here in ‘81, I was very fortunate to meet my wife. I first met her at Cotton Hill. We started dating. Her name was Kelly Hackler. I was blessed to have met a great gal like Kelly and we got married in 1985. Kelly has been my go-to person when I am faced with challenges, say the wrong thing, or anything else, but, uh…

GRANDE LIVING: Which is quite often!

Dennis Dugan: Yes, quite often… because I put my foot in my mouth a lot of times. But she is great. She’s a great person to bounce things off of. She has been my strength to get through all the things I’ve been through in my lifetime in the last 31 years. Her mother Nadine and dad Hack have been living with us for six years and she’s been the caregiver and it takes a special person to do that. She’s just a, just a great woman and I’m very, very lucky to have her as my partner.

GRANDE LIVING: She’s the one who covers what we affectionately refer to as “Duganisms”.

Dennis Dugan: Yes. (Laughs) . . . the “Duganisms”. Ever since I was born I have had a speech impediment. To compensate, I make up words, so what we do is we call them “Duganisms”.