News

A little better week for dairy

It was a little better week for dairy markets, cash cheese barrels finished the week at $1.17 and blocks were at $1.20. In the past two weeks, barrels have gained 8 cents and blocks are 11 cents higher. Class III futures had some nice gains for the week, the August contract increased 31 cents, September increased 48 cents, October up 66 cents, November gained 51 cents and December was 59 cents higher compared to last Friday’s close.

During the week, Commodity Credit Corporation purchased another 742,958 pounds of nonfat dry milk bringing total purchases since October 1 to 275,932,714 pounds.

The June slaughter numbers reflecting the seventh round of the CWT herd retirement program, 256,000 dairy cows were sent to market in June, up 75,000 from a year ago. However, Daily Dairy Report notes there are 3.9 million dairy replacements on hand as of the end of June matching the highest figure in 15 years. There were 42.4 replacements for every 100 cows in the milking line, up from 41.7 per 100 last year.

Signup for the eighth round of the CWT program ended Friday.