100 year old dairy.
On Nov. 20, 1916, Mary and her three boys, Kenneth, Olas and Rudd, arrived by train in Duncan.
Broughton, her husband, arrived separately on a freight train so he could bring chickens, a calf and their Jersey cow, Buttercup.
Broughton and Mary bought 40 acres from his cousin Edward for $6,800, to be paid over 10 years. They built a two-room adobe house on the property.
After a few years, a 10-cow dairy barn was built near Broughton’s house, and the cows were milked by hand in this barn until about 1945, when the dairy got its first milking machine. By then, they were using a cart and horse to haul the milk to Ed, who pasteurized, bottled and sold it. In 1948, they started hauling the milk in a pickup.
After Broughton died in 1946, Mary and her sons formed a partnership with Rudd, Elno, Irl and Elvin.
They built a new barn next to the 10-cow barn near Broughton’s house and, in 1953, they started milking in it. It was a six-stanchion barn, with six milking machines and a 200-gallon tank. They milked 250 cows a day and began selling milk to a large company.
In 1958, Mary and her sons bought Ed’s dairy. Because of price wars in 1961, all the dairies in Arizona joined together to form a milk cooperative.
In 1978, Elno left the family business and a new corporation was formed by Rudd, Irl and Elvin. Later, Nelson, Richard, Robert, Brent, Keith, Dale and Gerald all became partners.
In 1982, the dairy built a new state-of-the-art polygon herringbone dairy barn that milked 20 cows at a time, with two 4,000-gallon tanks, milking 500 cows a day.
In 2002, Brent left the dairy but continued a career in agriculture. Then in 2004, Richard was elected as Greenlee County Supervisor and left the dairy to pursue a career in politics.
As technology changed, so did the dairy. In November 2010, the dairy barn was remodeled into a 2x15 parallel-rapid exit design. It is currently milking 750 cows a day.
Over the years, the dairy bought different pieces of land and raised corn, potatoes, onions, cotton, hay and barley. They also bought several ranches.
Even though the business is called a dairy, they diversified into other areas of agriculture. The farmland now is used to raise feed for the dairy and pasture for the range cattle.
The dairy is now one of the largest businesses in Greenlee County. Although the family have been successful in raising agricultural products, they will tell you their greatest success lies in raising their families in this beautiful, agricultural lifestyle.