LONGMONT — Diamond D Dairy could easily grace the cover of Colorado State University’s agricultural sciences brochure, which calls its students and faculty “family.”
CSU pride runs deep through the Docheff family that owns and operates the dairy, just as it does the National Western Stock Show, Rodeo & Horse Show, which will celebrate CSU on Saturday.
Daughter Meghann, 21, is a junior in the school’s animal sciences program and a three-time academic scholarship winner from the National Western Stock Show, where she began showing livestock when she was 9 years old. She followed the hoof-steps of her 23-year-old brother, Josh, who graduated from the animal sciences program last spring.
Her parents, Jim and Kristie, met at CSU in the early 1980s. Kristie’s parents, Dick and Jocelyn Dixon, are alumni, and Jim’s father, Jim Sr., attended the university briefly before returning to the cows full-time.
There is still one Docheff to go. Younger brother Chisum, 17, a senior at Roosevelt, has yet to choose a college after attaining national titles in showing and judging livestock.
The Docheff family has been in the Colorado dairy business since 1912, today tending about 800 heifers and calves along Interstate 25 north of Longmont.
Until former school chief Al Yates ended the tradition a few years ago, each college president annually milked a Docheff cow near the stage after the State of the University address.
Jim Docheff won’t lie: He’s proud his children have continued the family’s Colorado State legacy — and in the family business.
“I guess it makes me feel like I must have done something right if the kids want to follow me in the business,” he said in the dairy office with his wife and daughter, both wearing CSU letters on their clothing.
Josh nearly went to Oklahoma State before CSU professors he had known since he was a child persuaded him to get his college degree in Fort Collins instead.
Josh had the grand champion Simmental bull at the National Western in 2006, his younger sister noted proudly, and started his own business, Purple Rose Show Cattle, to sell champion-caliber stock to other showmen while he was still in high school.
“It was a pretty easy choice,” Meghann said of choosing Colorado State. “Everyone (in the family) who’s gone there has become a success in the business.”
Jim never put any pressure on his children when it came to their education or career choice, but, for Meghann, the state’s other leading school, the University of Colorado, never had a chance.
“I wouldn’t be that dumb,” she said with a broad smile.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
