The LeRoy family from back left: Tim LeRoy, Kelsey Mode, Dorothy LeRoy, Ralph LeRoy and Jeff LeRoy. In front: Braelynn and Rylee LeRoy.

St. Eugene farm owns Canada’s second-best income earning cow

Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum

ST. EUGENE — By the end of 2023, 14-year-old Ivory made enough milk to fill almost five of the biggest dairy tanker trucks.

She was the oldest Holstein cow at Yorellea Farms, and her lifetime milk revenue was just over $157,000 — from more than 181,000 kg of milk produced through nine lactations. That placed Ivory as the second-best income earning living cow in Canada.

The lifetime top 100 revenue-earning cows is a new ranking compiled by Lactanet, the former DHI (Dairy Herd Improvement), and farmer-run milk recording organization. Ivory made her debut with this first edition but won’t be back in 2024 after her owners made the difficult decision to put the aging grande dam down in February.

“That was a bad day. She was a special one, that’s for sure,” said Tim Leroy, co-owner of the multi-generational farm with his father, Ralph, and uncle Jeff.

Ivory was never shown at a local fair and just went about her business in the barn. She never scored ‘excellent’ during classification because of her deep udder. But she had longevity, no health problems and good production. “She was a good barn cow, from a family of cows … with good longevity, good feet and legs, and they last,” he said. “Her feet and legs were still incredible at the end.”
Ivory was just about the last remaining cow at Yorellea that also produced milk in the Leroy family’s previous milking-parlour barn. That facility went out of service in 2013 when the family built a new barn with two robotic milkers in 2013. Ivory handled the transition with aplomb. She was a timid cow but was smart and consistently returned to the robotic milker without messing up.
“She would just kind of stand back and watch. Once that robot opened up, she would head right in and get milked and go out and eat and lay down again,” he said.

Ivory also produced a daughter that was on track to outpace her, he said, with an output of about 60,000 kg in four lactations, but an internal ailment unfortunately took that animal out of commission a few years ago.

Ivory was just one spot back from the number one top-earning cow, an animal from Quebec. According to Lactanet, the next best cow in the St. Eugene herd placed 85th in the top 100.