Episode Details

Here's a stat that should stop every dairy professional in their tracks: 81% of farmers who die by suicide never received any mental health treatment. Not most. Not many. Eighty-one percent. The clinical system isn't failing farmers at the margins — it's missing them almost entirely. This episode tells the story of Randy Roecker, a third-generation Wisconsin dairyman who fought depression for seven years, lost a neighbor to suicide, and then asked the question nobody in the industry was asking: what if the real first responders aren't therapists — they're the milk haulers, vets, and nutritionists already pulling into the driveway? What he built is changing how rural America thinks about farmer suicide prevention. And the data says your herd is already telling you when something's wrong.

Key Takeaways:

• Why dairy farmers face a suicide risk 3.5× higher than the general population — and why 81% die without ever entering the mental health system
• How the 2008 dairy crisis pushed a leveraged Wisconsin operation from $18/cwt to below $9, triggering a seven-year battle with depression
• The neighbor's suicide that broke the silence and launched the Farmer Angel Network
• What QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) training actually sounds like at 6 a.m. beside a bulk tank — and why it works
• University of Guelph research linking farmer anxiety and depression scores directly to severe lameness prevalence in dairy herds
• The difference between real crisis infrastructure and a hotline number printed on a milk check
• A practical playbook: the "7 out of 10 for two weeks" stress threshold, how to start a local support network with three phone calls, and which crisis resources to post where everyone on your operation can see them

Deeper Dive — Why Listen: This isn't a soft feature. It's a data-driven case study in what happens when an industry's most critical variable — the human managing the herd — goes unsupported.

Randy Roecker expanded Roecker's Rolling Acres in Sauk County to 300 cows in 2006 with $3 million in new debt. When milk prices collapsed, he lost an estimated $30,000 a month. Seven years of treatment for depression followed. Then, on October 8, 2018, his neighbor Leon Statz — who had battled depression for more than 20 years — died by suicide. Roecker and Statz's wife Brenda co-founded the Farmer Angel Network, a peer support model built around community events, church basements, and honest conversation rather than clinical intake forms.

The full written feature this episode is based on is live now at https://www.thebullvine.com/mental-health/81-never-got-help-randy-roecker-is-training-milk-haulers-to-save-dairy-farmers-lives/

If you or someone you know is in crisis: call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24/7) or the Wisconsin Farmer Wellness Helpline at 1-888-901-2558.