How this first-generation Dutch family achieved the American dream

As the name suggests, Dutch Cowboy Dairy was started by two humble and hardworking brothers from the Netherlands chasing the American dream.

At 18 years old, Steve Byl hopped on a plane to America as an exchange student from Holland. An eager “kid”, as Steve says, he worked a number of jobs on American dairies, such as milking, breeding and eventually being a herdsman, before deciding to establish roots in the United States.

Even before spending time in the United States, Steve, and his younger brother, Paul, who also moved to America to pursue dairy farming, already knew their passion was in dairy farming. When they were growing up in Holland in the 1970s, the cost of farming, as well as access to land, made it nearly impossible to start a dairy from the ground up.

“The main reason I came to the United States was for the American dream,” Steve says. “America offered the opportunities that I couldn’t get back home.”

Born in an apartment building to a stay-at-home mother and a father who was a financing manager for a corporation, the brothers weren’t raised on a dairy farm but were familiar with dairying as kids. They lived in an area of Holland dense with dairy farmers near their town, and they would play with their friends from school who lived on dairies.

“My ultimate dream was to become a dairy farmer, and luckily that dream came true,” Steve says.

What started as a dream and a passion finally came true in the late 1980s. After moving to the United States permanently with his wife, Yvonne, Steve worked as a farm hand in Oregon for 11 years.

In 1989, Steve and his brother, Paul, along with their wives, Yvonne and Bernadien, founded Dutch Cowboy Dairy in Dublin, Texas, where there was ample land for building a dairy from the ground up.

The brothers began milking around 40 cows in a double six parlor, which milks 12 cows at a time. They had to build the farm from scratch, putting in the fences, pens, barns and milking parlors necessary for operating a dairy. In November 1989, they received their first milk check and have the same milk check framed today as a reminder of how far they’ve come. With each check, they invested in the farm, eventually working their way up to milking around 700–800 dairy cows.

Back then, they were members of American Milk Producers Inc., a predecessor milk marketing cooperative of Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), and they have been farmer-owners of DFA ever since.

“Since the start of Dutch Cowboy Dairy, DFA has always been a secure place to market our milk,” Steve says.

A few years later, the brothers wanted to grow the dairy and hoped to do it in a different climate than the hot summers and arid winters of Texas. Looking to grow, they looked for land and availability out West in Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico, and ultimately decided on Paragonah, Utah — a small town located between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas.

“It was important to have quality of life,” Steve says. “Utah has many national parks and is a beautiful place to raise our families.”

In 1996, they bought desert land to move the dairy to and once again started from the ground up. At the time, they put in a 74-cow rotary barn — one of the first in the United States. Like a merry-go-round for cows, a rotary rotates continuously, milking the cows as it turns, allowing the people doing the milking to stay in one place.

“Rotaries weren’t new technology at the time, but not a lot of people had them,” Paul says. “It enabled us to milk more cows at a time. The rotary runs 24/7, 365 days a year.”

Today, they milk 5,500 Holstein cows in the same rotary and run the cows in dry lots, with help from their 25 employees. Dutch Cowboy Dairy primarily ships their milk to DFA’s plant in Beaver, Utah, just a few miles down the road. The plant makes and provides cheese for The Creamery, DFA’s retail store, which is located right next door.

“The Creamery is such a great place and brings such a unique attraction to this part of the state,” Steve says.

The farm will continue to evolve in the future, with Steve’s son, Matt, taking on more of the day-to-day responsibilities. There are also future plans to lease land to install 1,200 acres of solar panels to capture solar energy — an opportunity to make the most of their desert landscape by harnessing the power of the sun.

Steve and Yvonne, parents to five kids, and grandparents, make sure to spend quality time away from working, although many days they don’t think of it as work. With Matt taking a more active role, they have time to dedicate to their growing family.

“Dairy farming is more than a job to me, it’s a passion,” Steve says. “And, when something is a passion, you don’t look at it by the hours spent doing it. But we do balance our life. We work hard and we play hard — like taking vacations or attending our grandkids’ activities.”

Just like dairy farming was a passion for Steve, his four other children have found passions in other fields — including a medical professional, dental assistant and construction. Yvonne, who has helped manage the books at Dutch Cowboy Dairy, and Steve have always encouraged their children to follow their own passions, just as Steve did coming to America to start a dairy.

Dairy is a lifelong passion that Steve and Yvonne want to share with their community. It’s why they offer farm tours for local schools and the public — so those not familiar with dairy life can see their cows in person, learn about what cows eat and how they are milked. Steve’s daughter-in-law, Nikki, helps with that side of promoting the business, as well as managing the farm’s social media accounts.

Over 40 years filled with plenty of ups and downs, Steve is still positive about the future of dairy and what it has to offer.

“It’s a tough industry to get into; you have to have the capital, the passion and the dedication to survive. But it’s very rewarding to look back and see how far we’ve come,” he says.