There’s a plaque on Doug DeGroff’s office wall in Tulare, Calif. that reads: “Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”
Next to it hang two back braces.
Most people who walk into his office don’t ask about them. But if they did, DeGroff would tell them two stories that fundamentally changed how he thinks about his work, his family and what actually matters.
The first story begins on August 27, 2009. The second begins years later on a day he doesn’t talk about as specifically, but remembers just as vividly.
Both times, DeGroff nearly died. Both times, he was given a second chance. And both times, he came back with lessons that go far beyond dairy nutrition.
August 27, 2009: When the Sun Went Out
Doug was 36 years old. He and his wife, Alison, had two young boys at home. She was pregnant with their third child, though they didn’t know it yet.
It was a Thursday. Doug drove to a dairy north of Visalia to do what he’d done thousands of times before: take forage samples from a silage pile.
He was admiring how mechanically shaven the pile looked — shaped like a loaf of bread, smooth and well-compacted. He even took a photo of it.
Then he walked up to the face of the pile to pull a sample.
“While I was taking the sample, it was like a piece of bread came off,” Doug recalls. “The entire face, about eight to 12 inches in, just fluffed off.”
Then twenty tons of silage came down.
“I could see the sun going out as it came down,” Doug says. “I knew exactly what was going to happen, and I knew I did not want to die there.”
The weight hit him. Buried him. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t get himself out.
A feeder working nearby saw it happen. He ran over and pulled Doug out — “almost like you would pull a calf,” Doug says.
Doug got up. Looked around. He was in one piece. His shoes were gone, buried somewhere in the pile. His back was screaming in pain.
But his first thought wasn’t about himself. It was about the dairy owner.
“I was worried about the owner, having somebody hurt on his dairy,” Doug says. “So, I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to be fine.’”
He drove himself to the hospital. Parked across the street because he didn’t realize there was special parking for emergency patients.
He called Alison to meet him there.
He was admitted with a broken back and torn ligaments.
The Year of Recovery — and Gratitude
Within a year, Doug made a full recovery. The broken vertebrae healed. The ligaments repaired. He was back to 100%.
But something else had changed.
“I had a new appreciation for silage safety,” Doug says. “I had a new appreciation for the risks on the dairy. I had a new appreciation for nurses and doctors. I had a new appreciation for people who were hurt.”
He also realized something sobering about his work.
“I was a young man. I was 36 when it happened, and I thought this couldn’t happen to me,” he says. “It gave me an appreciation that it can happen to anyone at any point in time.”
Doug started talking to dairy owners about silage safety plans. Not just protocols on paper, but actual communication with employees and anyone who might be on a silage pile.
“If you don’t have a silage safety plan in place, and God forbid somebody were to get hurt or killed on your dairy, all you now have is excuses,” Doug says.
The back brace from that accident — the first one — hangs on his office wall today.
“It’s a reminder of gratitude,” Doug says. “I didn’t get hurt that bad. I was able to make a full and complete recovery. I just had a new appreciation for a lot of things.”
But mostly, it was a reminder that he’d been given a second chance.
He didn’t know then that he’d need a third.
The Second Accident: 11 Vertebrae, 12 Ribs and Three Days of Paralysis
Years later, Doug had another accident. This time it had nothing to do with silage or even being on a dairy.
He was riding a quad. He had a stroke. Went headfirst.
“I use the analogy that my body was like an accordion,” Doug says.
Eleven vertebrae. Twelve ribs. A severe concussion.
For three days, Doug couldn’t move anything from the waist down.
“I kept saying, ‘Fix my legs, fix my legs,’” Doug says — though he doesn’t remember saying it. A paramedic told him later.
This time, the recovery wasn’t a year. It was longer. Much longer.
Doug spent a long time in the hospital. A long time in a wheelchair. A long time working with therapists — 16 different therapists, to be exact.
“That one represents a lot more pain,” Doug says, gesturing to the second back brace on his wall. “It represents a lot more gratitude to those people who help.”
Today, Doug has two rods and 20 screws in his back. He’s on no pain medication. He’s able to do his job fully — back on dairies, back in feed alleys, back doing everything he did before.
But he’s not the same person.
The One-Year Anniversary: Saying Thank You
On the one-year anniversary of the second accident, Doug and Alison decided to do something most people never do.
They went back to thank everyone who had saved him.
First stop: the emergency room.
They met the nurses and doctors who had cared for him. One nurse remembered him immediately. She gave him a big hug and told him she’d been praying for him.
Doug didn’t remember her — the head injury had wiped out much of his memory from that time. But she remembered him.
Next stop: the ambulance station.
Doug met his paramedic and ambulance driver. They were shocked to see him walking.
“They had never had anybody come back and thank them,” Doug says. “They didn’t know where I ended up. Their job is to get the person to the hospital, and then the doctors and nurses do their job. They can’t follow up.”
The paramedic told Doug what he’d been saying over and over during transport: “Fix my legs. Fix my legs.”
“You’re walking,” the paramedic said, still amazed.
Final stop: the fire station.
Doug met the two firefighters who had responded first. One of them remembered Doug’s desperation to move his legs.
Doug brought donuts for everyone. But more than that, he gave them something they rarely receive: the knowledge that their work mattered. That the person they saved went on to live a full life.
“I think they took pride out of where I ended up,” Doug says. “And I’m grateful to them for all they did.”
The Lesson He Didn’t Expect
Both accidents taught Doug about gratitude. About the skill and dedication of first responders, nurses, doctors and therapists. About the fragility of life and the gift of recovery.
But the most important lesson came from somewhere else.
“We’re all replaceable,” Doug says. “Let’s face that. If I hadn’t come out of that silage avalanche, the clients I work with would have hired somebody else. The dairies would have been just fine. They would have thought of me from time to time, and life would have gone on.”
He pauses.
“But my wife? It would have been completely different. I would have left a widow who was pregnant, with two young kids. Her life and my kids’ lives would have been forever changed.”
He gestures to the plaque on his wall.
“Professionally, we’re all replaceable. But family? Family won’t move on. That’s maybe the point of this.”
It’s a lesson Doug carries with him every day — in how he structures his work, how he prioritizes his time and what advice he gives to the young nutritionists and dairy managers he mentors.
“Take the time at home,” Doug says simply.
The Feeder Schools: Respect and Recognition
Doug worked as a nutritionist for several years, then in 2007 founded his own practice, Diversified Dairy Solutions, which he ran for 17 years before joining Progressive Dairy Solutions in 2024.
Throughout his career, Doug has been known for something unusual: his feeder schools.
He’d bring in feeders, relief feeders and anyone who might touch the TMR mixer. They’d attend three sessions and receive a laminated certificate with their name, a gold sticker, and the title “Feeder Certification.”
For some employees, it was the biggest formal recognition they’d ever received.
“Some feeders went to their owners and showed them that certificate and wanted a raise right away,” Doug laughs. “Others used it when job hunting.”
Some dairies weren’t thrilled. But Doug didn’t care.
“When you have an engaged feeder, you have a successful feeding program,” he says. “The number one expense on a dairy is feed. Yet feeders often have zero training and no formal education. They’re driving equipment worth half a million dollars and spending millions monthly. That has to change.”
It was about respect. About recognizing that the people doing the work deserve investment, training, and acknowledgment.
It’s a philosophy Doug learned partly from his father, partly from his mentors and partly from lying under 20 tons of silage, thinking about what actually matters.
What the Back Braces Mean
Today, Doug is back on dairies every day, working with producers on nutrition, management and the systems that make operations run smoothly.
But he’s different now.
The two back braces hanging on his office wall aren’t just medical equipment. They’re reminders.
Reminders of survival. Of second and third chances. Of the nurses who prayed for him, the paramedics who never knew if he walked again, the firefighters who remembered his desperation to move his legs.
Reminders that professionally, we’re all replaceable — but to our families, we’re irreplaceable.
And reminders of the plaque that hangs between them: “Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”
“That’s the lesson,” Doug says. “The businesses will move on. They’ll find somebody else. But family won’t.”
He pauses, looking at the braces.
“I’m grateful for both of these,” he says. “Not for the pain. But for what they taught me. And for the fact that I’m still here to learn it.”
Twenty tons of silage should have killed him. Eleven broken vertebrae and 12 broken ribs should have left him paralyzed. But Doug DeGroff walked away from both — twice given a chance most people never get. He could have used those second chances to work harder, make his business bigger, serve more clients, build a bigger name.
Instead, he used them to work smarter, leave on time and build a life his kids will remember. Because in the end, Doug learned the simplest and hardest truth of all: No one on their deathbed wishes they’d spent more time at work. No one eulogizes a great nutritionist by listing the dairies he served.
They talk about the father who showed up. The husband who came home. The man who learned — the hard way, twice — that making a living is important, but making a life is everything. The back braces hang there to make sure Doug never forgets. And to make sure anyone who sees them remembers too.
