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Dairy herd, milk production growing

A dairy economist says herd size and milk production are growing.

Corey Geiger with CoBank tells Brownfield, “It’s growing because dairy farmers are culling less dairy cows.”

Geiger says that means milk margins are favorable for most producers.  He says if you look at the past 96 weeks, dairy farmers have collectively culled 700-thousand fewer dairy cows, including 100-thousand fewer this year alone.

Geiger says that growth is not happening everywhere. “Some of the states are pretty flat on cow numbers. The big growth has been comingin Texas, Idaho, Kansas, and South Dakota. That’s most of the growth areas with new dairy processing assets coming online.”

And, Geiger says the areas with the most growth in milk production are not the areas with the higher milk prices, but in areas with new processing plant demand.

Geiger says if milk margins get too low from excess production, producers have an option. “If milk margins shrink a little bit, we have record beef prices and we can rather quickly in this era correct the cow numbers, should we need to.” But, Geiger is not expecting that to happen because of strong export sales and the need for domestic stocks to build before the fall holiday season.