About Us
History
It began with 160 acres, a farmhouse, a barn and a sheep shed. Now, Muggli Bros., Inc. provides feed for livestock throughout Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, and other outlying states. They have grown over the years and have incorporated new technologies along with the old tried and true to insure that the quality of the feed produced matches their customer’s nutritional needs for maintaining a healthy herd.
Joe Muggli and his two brothers parted ways in Rosebud, MT, in 1925, when all three siblings set up farms in Saskatchewan, North Dakota and Miles City, MT. Joe found farming along the Yellowstone River just east of Miles City, to be steady work, and further supplemented his farming income with custom thrashing. The farm began to grow with each decade, along with the family, as acreage was purchased from the 1940’s to the 1990’s.
In 1968, it was discussed among several generations, on whether to continue farming as they were, or to expand their offering to the surrounding community as a feed producing company. They decided to go ahead with the latter, and so it began. Construction of the first mill started in 1968, and in the following year, it was finished and ready to serve its first customer in the fall of 1969. Muggli Brothers was now established, with a name befitting its creators, as brothers were working with brothers, uncles with their nephews, grandfathers with their grandsons, and fathers with their sons.
Concern for the nutritional value of their product was and still is, a number one priority. In the beginning, many hours were spent researching and studying the best possible combination of ingredients for their feed that would benefit their customers to the utmost. This is an ever-changing aspect of the business. Today, Muggli Bros., Inc. still successfully incorporates their knowledge of the various grain plants, vegetable crops, and other ingredients used into the product that is best suited to its consumer. In the beginning, there were three ingredients, and today, there are 6 plus, with the option of a customizable feed produced for a specific customer’s needs.
The first mill was small with two ton of product being produced per hour, 90 – 100 days of the year. The ingredient base was everything that they grew on the Muggli farm. After updates and bigger mills were installed in 1975 and 1983, their production level officially doubled. Their last update to the mill size was made in 2008 and is the mill that is seen today, producing up to 225 tons a day seven months a year, with the pellet plant potentially running year round.
As always, Muggli Bros., Inc. is sensitive to its customer base and their needs. They began offering the option of having their feed delivered in 1990’s, and have expanded their fleet of trucks to compensate for consumer demand.
As the years have progressed in the agricultural business, so has Muggli Bros., Inc. They have kept their equipment and farming implements well serviced and up to date. Up until 2009, Muggli Bros., Inc. was using haybusters (Stack-eze models) and a modified Euclid rock truck to make haystacks two loads tall that could be seen for miles. Today, they use a large square baler that cuts haying time down to a third time spent. Irrigation was done by flood irrigating until 2013, when their first field sprinklers were installed and are continuing to be installed in the fields. As decades pass in the farming industry, Muggli Bros., Inc. utilizes their knowledge from days gone by and applies this to the progressive advancements of today in making educated decisions that will benefit feed production, consumer product, and the quality of their field crops.
Today
Today, any one of the Muggli family, along with their loyal employees can be seen at any time during the day on one job or another, going from shop to pellet plant and back, checking barley, alfalfa, or corn fields, helping to load customers, or filling a semi to deliver to a customer out of town. They cannot continue to keep the gears turning, so to speak, without the help of their employees, some of which have been with the company for years. This has made it possible to maintain a sustainable feed producing company that provides product to consumers far and wide.