More Cows in the Barn

ZISK
Apr 30
2 min read

Every week, U.S. dairy producers send about 10,000 fewer milk cows to beef packers than they used to. That’s slowly adding up to more cows in the barn. Even so, dairy cow head counts are not as high as previously thought. After its quarterly survey, USDA trimmed its estimates of January and February milk cow inventories. The agency pegged the herd at 9.404 million head in March, up 57,000 head from a year ago and 8,000 head greater than USDA’s revised February inventory. However, March’s herd was still 1,000 head smaller than USDA’s initial February number.

There are a lot of new cows in the Plains. Texas is home to 45,000 more cows that it had in March 2024. Milk-cow head counts are up 8,000 head in Kansas, 9,000 in South Dakota and 29,000 in Idaho. But just across the state line, Washington is home to 9,000 fewer cows than it had in March 2024. The auction docket shows that many more cows will leave the state in the months to come. This will fuel expansion elsewhere and allow cull rates to creep upward.

U.S. milk output topped 19.8 billion pounds last month, up 9% from March 2024 and on par with year-over-year growth in February. The trade had expected slightly bigger growth, counting on rising head counts to more than offset the lingering impact of avian influenza in California and financial troubles in Washington. The number of California herds actively facing the bird flu continued to dwindle, but the virus still took a toll on milk output. Production in the Golden State was 2.1% lower than in March 2024, an improvement on the 2.7% deficit in February.

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