Harold & Norma Becher presented this picture of Ellen, World Champion milk producing cow 1975-92, to the Fulton County Museum.

Ellen, Champion Milk Producing Cow for 17 Years, Changed the World
By Shirley Willard, Fulton County Historian

There once was a black and white cow named Ellen, who lived south of Rochester, and became a world champion milk producer in 1975. People came from all over the world to see her. Car loads of visitors arrived nearly every day and buses brought visitors almost weekly all summer long. Ellen held the world record for 17 years till 1992. During that time she helped to change history and the way of life for all farmers.

Beecher Arlinda Ellen, her registered name, was owned and raised by Harold and Norma Beecher and their eight children on a farm near Mt. Zion at the south end of Lake Manitou. Ellen was a big Holstein cow, a gentle peaceful cow that calmly chewed her cud and produced lots of milk. She produced 195 pounds or 23 gallons of milk one day in January 1975. She averaged 165 pounds of milk a day that year. (I can remember in the 1950s my father getting two or three gallons from a Guernsey cow and thinking that 5 gallons from a cow at one milking was great.) Ellen’s record of 55,560 pounds of milk in one year was verified by Dairy Herd Improvement Association officials, working with Purdue University Extension specialists. Holding the world record for 17 years was an amazing record!

Weighing about 1800 pounds, Ellen was considerably larger than the average cow. Her udder was larger too, being wider and deeper, closer to the ground than most cow's. She ate about 60 to 70 pounds of a commercial grain mixture, the same amount of top quality alfalfa hay and drank between 50 to 60 gallons of water a day. She was an exceptional converter of feed, according to Purdue University. She ate about seven percent of her body weight in dry matter daily and produced five times as much milk as the average cow.

Because of Ellen, agriculturists and farm representatives came from all over the world to visit and to buy Holstein cattle in Indiana. Yes, Indiana became the top producer of dairy cattle. Farmers in foreign countries wanted those black and white cows from Indiana - no other state would do! - and they came by airplanes and then by buses to see her. This was at a time when artificial insemination and in vitro growing of eggs and implanting those eggs in other cows was just beginning to gain popularity. Ellen’s calves would be considered very valuable. Sperm from her sons were used to artificially inseminate many cows for several years.

Ellen's milk production helped revolutionize dairy farming. Fewer cows were needed to produce milk for the world. That meant fewer farms and dairymen. That spelled the end of the widow who supported herself and her few acres by milking and selling Grade B milk to small plants like Armours Creamery at Rochester, Litchfield at Warsaw, and Winsor Dairy and Craft Dairy, Peru, in the 1930s to 1960s.

At the same time, the world became conscious of the effects of fat and high chloresterol on human heart problems. Being a Holstein, Ellen's fame contributed to the shift in popularity of brown cows to black and white cows. No more Jerseys and Guernseys with their high butterfat content. Out the door with Ada the Ayrshire, a popular cartoon about the crazy antics of a contrary cantankerous cow in farming magazines! In with the pretty black and white cows!

Cow crafts popped up all over, especially black and white Holstein cows. They are popular subjects for arts and crafts in the Midwest. They are seen in ceramics, paintings, appliques on towels and clothing, dolls, every kind of material. Ellen's likeness is being reproduced by artists all over the world. The picture of a gentle black and white cow is found wherever rural art is found: in calendars, magazine ads, books, festivals, and schools. There are also silly pictures and statues of little cows in dresses and aprons, black and white calves in straw hats with fishing poles, etc. Small statues of cows and calves in a different pose for every month of the year now grace many a shelf in thousands of homes.

Thanks, Ellen. You had no idea how much influence you would have.

Ellen's mother (or "dam" in breeder's talk) was Bridgecrest Skylighter Elsie, purchased from Harry Bridge & Son (Jim), Royal Center. Harry is the father of Bob Bridge of Rochester. Ellen's father or sire was Pawnee Farms Arlinda Chief, owned by Wallace Lindskoog, of California. Beecher Arlinda Ellen was her whole name, and she was born on the Beecher farm a half mile east of the Mt. Zion bridge. Ellen was raised there, and was the 4-H project of the oldest son, Stan Beecher. He was a member of the Woodrow Sodbusters 4-H Club and attended Woodrow School for his first grade. Woodrow was closed in 1959 and the pupils went to Columbia Elementary in Rochester. Stan and the other Beecher kids rode the school bus driven by my father, Charlie Ogle.

Ellen was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records 1975-92 as the world champion cow. Her picture was in Life magazine. Life sent a photographer from New York City to spend several days at the farm capturing Ellen in many poses. After all of his work, the print they chose to publish simply showed Ellen grazing with a goose wandering by in the foreground. A large photo of her is still exhibited at the Purdue University Veterinary School. When she was the world champion, Purdue and Curtis Breeding Service would hold a special day "Ellen Day USA" and place a huge framed photo of Ellen by an alfalfa field and Harold Beecher was there to tell visitors about the feed that Ellen ate.

Ellen had seven offspring. All were bull calves except for one heifer, which was born as a twin to a bull. This heifer was infertile, as commonly happens in over 90% of bovine females born twin to a male. Such heifers are termed "free-martins." Using modern medicine, veterinarians can stimulate the growth of multiple eggs in a cow's ovaries and later artificially inseminate the cow to produce fertilized embryos. A week later the embryos are harvested and can be grown in vitro or immediately transferred to recipient cows which carry the resulting calves through the pregnancy periods. In this manner, more calves can be produced from one cow than the normal one calf per year. (The gestation period for cows is 285 days.) Unfortunately this technology was only in its early stages in the 1970s. Later developments vastly improved the success of these techniques. Ellen was taken to a clinic in Michigan to have her eggs harvested, but she yielded only one fertile embryo that lived. All six of her sons were used in artificial insemination (AI) to sire calves but none of her descendants achieved Ellen's huge milk-producing capacity

How Ellen got to be the World Champion Cow
By Shirley Willard, Fulton County Historian

Harold and Norma Beecher and their eight children raised Ellen, a black and white cow that became world champion milk producer in 1975. To celebrate a luncheon was held in the Rochester High School cafeteria, sponsored by Dean's Milk, Curtis Breeding Service and Purdue University. Ellen's record stood for 17 years, until in 1992 another cow surpassed it.

To verify the milk records, testers came once a month to check results by watching the milking and weighing, usually 11 or 12 times a year to establish a true record. Purdue and Holstein Assn. did 21 tests in one year to verify Ellen's milk production. Now cows are tested every 60 days. Ellen's world record stood for 17 years, and then along came Tullando Royalty Maxima, of Oxford, New Hampshire, who broke the record in 1992. The record has been broken seven times since. Today the world record is held by a North Carolina cow, LA-Foster Blacketor Lucy with 75,275 pounds of milk in 1998. Later records were not verified as closely as Ellen's.

Dr. Jack Albright, Purdue Univeristy, worked with the record keepers and built up a collection of materials about Ellen. He donated materials and a video of Ellen to the Fulton County Museum. Albright recently gave a talk in Japan on the Behavior of the High Yielding Cow. When he retired in 1996, he donated boxes of Ellen materials to the School of Veterinary Medicine Library at Purdue University.

Harold and Norma Beecher have eight children: Stan, Fort Wayne; Steve, Brattleboro, Vermont; Susan, Indianapolis; Sherry, Cleveland, Ohio; Scott, Howe, Ind.; Shirley, Logansport; Paul, Bluffton; and Pat, Valparaiso. All have become professionals and succeeded in their chosen careers, which may explain why the Beechers have only four grandchildren.

Only one son continues work with cows and milk production. Steve Beecher works for Holstein Association USA, a registration organization for Holstein breeders, located at Brattleboro, Vermont. I called Steve to get his memories of Ellen and more detailed information on Holstein records. He recalled that thousands of visitors came to see Ellen from all six continents: North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Beechers kept guest books for them to sign. The US government once brought agricultural attaches from 23 countries, and they ate box lunches at Beecher's. Another time a German group made a video of Ellen to show on Germany's TV.

Steve said Ellen was like part of the family. She liked visitors but did not get along well with other cows, being a "boss cow." She had an enormous appetite and seemed to eat 20 hours a day. The Beecher boys spent a lot of time carrying feed and water by hand to Ellen. She would knock other cows away from the feed so they put her in a box stall by herself. Every day Ellen was put out in a two-acre old apple orchard by herself to graze. Ellen loved apples, the only treat she was allowed. She was led by halter to the milking parlor, a real family pet.

Steve said they never really put a price on Ellen, but she was valued at six figures or more. Estimating her value is difficult because the value of a champion milk producer depends in part on her ability to produce embryos resulting in many salable offspring. Because Ellen did not produce embryos or daughters, she was not able to reach full potential in that way.

Ellen's mother, Elsie, was the first purebred cow Beechers ever owned. Ellen was sired by artificial insemination (AI), by Bob Bridge, Rochester, who operated his own Curtis AI service. Elsie was hard to breed and had to have several services before she got pregnant, but Bob kept trying and used semen from the same bull every time. This is unusual because after a few times of the AI not taking, they usually switch to another bull. The cost of the AI service was $18 for semen and $6 for the service, for a total of $24 each time. Repeat services were $3 less. While considered costly for the time, Bob's persistence and belief in the potential of this mating proved prophetic. Ellen was the fourth calf born to Elsie. Steve says that Ellen was a genetic freak because of the many unusual things in her make-up but his father maintains that Ellen was no freak, just a fortunate set of circumstances. Whichever the case, over a billion potential genetic combinations exist from any bovine mating as each parent contributes 30 chromosome pairs.

The Beechers built a new dairy barn for their herd of 65 cows and 65 young, which included Ellen and her half sister Valerie. Unlike Ellen, Valerie produced several heifer calves and embryos, which were sold. Durng her fourth year, Ellen was placed in a special box stall in out of the flies and heat. Ellen's daily behavior was recorded and studied, such things as her greatest feeding period was 3 a.m. to 11 a.m., she shut her eyes only 30 minutes a day, had an even temperament and was not upset by intruders, she was a dominate or boss cow, and had minimal investigative behavior, or in other words, was not nosey. In one 24-hour period Ellen consumed hay 13 times, grain 12 times; straw 2 times; water 7 times; and mineralized salt 5 times. She spent 7 hours and 30 minutes ruminating or chewing her cud. Of the 14 hours lying, 8 hours were lying on her right side and 6 hours on her left side.

When a cow is flushed to get the eggs, they may get one to 50 eggs at a time. A cow can be flushed every month for eggs. First the cow is artificially inseminated, and after seven days, the flushing is done to get fertilized eggs (embryos) that can be grown in vitro and then implanted in other cows. In that way, a cow that produces high quantities of milk can have her genetics multiplied many times more than just by having one pregnancy a year, which is the normal course of events. The gestation period for dairy cattle is approximately 285 days.

Ellen was flushed about 20 times but the harvested eggs were unfertile except for one. Ellen's last calf was born breach, which means back feet first, a bull calf, but during the birth Ellen's cervix was torn. So she was not bred again. Her one egg that proved viable was a bull and was contracted to a Japanese AI company, but it had an umbilical hernia. It was surgically repaired but the Japanese could not take the bull because of their government's ban on imports of animals which had experienced hernias.

As time passed Ellen got old. She got gray hairs all over the black spots. She developed kidney problems and eventually could not stand. So the Beechers had veterinarian Richard Sommers, Silver Lake, to come and put her to sleep. She died March 17, 1984. Milt Thousand came with his backhoe to dig the grave. Ellen was buried near the road in the Beecher's yard, near the sign that stood there proclaiming her to be the World Champion Cow.

Today Ellen still lies in an unmarked grave in front of the former Beecher home, now owned by Amish farmers, east of the Amish one-room school and the Mt. Zion bridge. Maybe someday someone will place a historical marker there or at the Mt. Zion bridge. Meanwhile Ellen is remembered by a big picture in the meeting room of the Fulton County Museum, recently donated by Harold and Norma Beecher. There is a drawer full of memorabilia collected by FCHS, the Beechers and Dr. Jack Albright. This includes studies that record such details as that cows eating with their heads in the downward position produce 17% more saliva than cows eating with head held horizontally, which directly influences the efficiency of ruminal functions and probably increases milk production. These studies were to find information to help farmers do things to produce more milk. Evidently, it is working because the U.S. has fewer cows and dairies producing more milk than a larger number of cows did years ago. In 1951 Fulton County had many dairy herds; the size averaged seven and a half cows. Today Fulton County has bigger and fewer dairy farms, maybe as few as ten.

The big blue silo at the former Beecher farm still has the words in white letters: HOME OF ELLEN, BEECHER HOLSTEINS, a reminder of when the black and white cow lived there and set the world record a quarter of a cenntury ago.

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