Jersey Canada adds third-generation Brant Jersey booster—mentor to their honorary lifetime member roster

George is the second Kyle to make Jersey Canada’s honorary life time member roster.

By Diane Baltaz

In a time when Holsteins dominate the Canadian dairy industry, and hockey sweaters and not cows come up first in internet searches for Jerseys, the Kyles of Ash Lawn Farm south of Ayr stuck to raising premium Jersey cows for a century. Moreover, its current patriarch, George Kyle, earned Canada-wide recognition for promoting the breed.

Jersey Canada declared Kyle, a third-generation Jersey breeder, as one of its three 2025 honourary lifetime members.

Nominated by Jersey Ontario (formerly the Ontario Jersey Club), Jersey Canada cited multiple examples of Kyle’s commitment to the breed, including his term as a director of the Ontario Jersey Club and then as its president in 1999. The association referenced several ways how he encouraged Ontario youth to consider raising Jerseys, in conjunction with his late wife, Nancy.

“I’m the second Kyle to receive this honour,” said Kyle while sitting in the home farm’s kitchen with his Jersey Canada plaque. Jersey Canada previously listed his father, Robert, on the national honour roll in 2008. That tribute happened just months after the Brant County Federation of Agriculture declared the Kyles as the Brant Farm Family of the year.

Kyle’s innate Jersey love intensified when he began exhibiting Jersey calves in 4-H and at Jersey calf rallies. George became a partner in Ashlawn Farms when he graduated from Ontario Agricultural College and married Nancy in 1975.

The family got into Jerseys in the mid-1920s when Kyle’s grandfather, Jack and his great-uncle James switched their farm’s beef operation on the Brant-Oxford Townline to a Jersey dairy farm. Ash Lawn Farm had 25 to 30 milking cows by the time of Kyle’s birth; today they have 55 milking cows which are primarily tended to by Carmen, who is one of two sons operating the farm.

Jack and James Kyle chose Jersey cows for their higher protein and butterfat content. This is their descendants’ motive for keeping this breed, along with increasing public demand for higher-protein milk products.

In fact, as part of his personal promotion of Jersey milk, Kyle invested in, and as a director in the former Quality Jersey Products, an all-Jersey cheese and dairy product plant in Seaforth several decades ago.

This involvement occurred in a period when Jersey breeders and some dairy processors lobbied the Ontario Milk Marketing Board (now Dairy Farmers of Ontario or DFO) to allow Jersey milk to be separated from the province’s common milk pool in order to make specialized product, as some other provinces were allowing.

“The greater fat and butter content in their (Jersey) milk makes for better cheese and butter production. In those days, around 1968, the Milk Marketing Board said that ‘milk is milk’,” he explained.

Quality Jersey Products no longer exists -- the Millbank Cheese and Butter Company purchased its cow milk supply quota in 2004.

“But it helped lead us to where we’re at now,” said Kyle. “Initially the lobbying was unsuccessful; now there are on-farm milk processors.”

But most of Kyle’s breed promotion work involved mentoring youth, according to Jersey Canada.

“His most significant contribution to the Ontario Jersey Club would have to be his dedication to the Jersey Youth Seminar, a three-day seminar for teenaged youth across Ontario. He and his wife Nancy helped organize and chaperone this event for over a decade,” states Jersey Canada’s press release on Kyle’s election to their Honour Roll.

The youth seminar is a three-day weekend event for teens aged 16 to 20, which Kyle linked with the annual Jersey Club sale. Kyle said that he and Nancy took youth on farm and business tours and brought in guest speakers “to learn what the Jersey business is all about for the breeding and the promotion of this breed.”

For more than 10 years, Kyle also served as a 4-H leader for the Brant 4-H Dairy and even the Sheep Clubs. He raised Dorset sheep, beginning with six ewes and growing the herd in Kyle’s words, “until they became a meaningful part of the operation by the early 2000s when they became more than a hobby.”

He joined the Drumbo Agricultural Society, showing livestock and eventually becoming the fair’s president.

This dairy farmer also participated as an intensive grazing expert in the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs’ Pasture Mentorship Program. He offered suggestions about rotation practices and planting to farmers across Southern Ontario, including multiple Juno and Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame winner George Fox, whose family runs a cash crop-beef operation.

Ash Lawn Farm achieved further recognition with Jersey Ontario’s select Ontario Invitational Sale (OIS) – a major annual consignment sale which has ran each spring since 1965. Open to buyers from across Canada and the United States, a designated Ontario Jersey selection committee chooses 30 to 50 of the top cattle of members’ herds to consign.

Ashlawn consigned some of their top heifers to the sale over the years, several of which were later nominated as the “All-Canadian” at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.

“It’s an honour thing,” said Kyle, grinning.

Other Ash Lawn cattle or their offspring which Kyle sold through the OIS went to the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin.

“We’ve watched these Jerseys or their offspring in some cases move around North America in some cases.”

Kyle also purchased many OIS calves for his children to enter in the affiliated OIS Youth Production Contest, which encourages youth to gain skills in herd management and milk production. In one year, he purchased an OIS heifer for all four of his children—Carmen, Christopher, Kathryn and Curtis.

“4-H kids can enter the Youth Production Contest,” said George. “Parents buy the heifer with the hope she calves and produces a lot of milk. All four of my children were involved in this.”

Consequently, three of Kyle’s children actively breed Jersey stock and are involved with both Jersey Ontario and Jersey Canada: Carman and Christopher run Ashlawn Farm, with extensive day-to-day help from their father; Kathryn milks a mixed Jersey-Holstein herd several kilometers away. Curtis works locally as a mechanic.

Today, the family’s bank barn is gone, having been replaced last year by a new barn with a robotic milking system that is set up to milk up to 60 cows. Training the cows to go the robots for milking was “no problem as they were easily attracted to the high-protein, sweeter treat that appears before them in the milking spot,” said Kyle. “And besides, Jerseys have higher intelligence!”

But he admitted that, “It took some getting used to the fact that the robots’ sensors go by numbers on the cow tags, not by their names, after decades of calling them by name. The cows still have names, but we’ve got to match the number with the cow, instead of wondering ‘Which cow is this?’”

Off-farm, Kyle visits other farms for morning coffee each Wednesday, plays pickle ball in Paris, mentors his grandchildren and local sports teams.

Kyle is prepping a fifth generation to continue the family’s Jersey breed connection: his grandchildren Maddie and Kallum recently got OIS heifers transferred into their names. 