News

USDA says milk production up again

USDA officials say January milk production is up 1.8% from a year ago.  The report issued Wednesday says the 23 major milk producing states marketed 17.3 billion pounds of milk last month, and production per-cow is up 24 pounds over last January.

The top producing states continue to be California and Wisconsin, each with more than a million head of dairy cows.  Production per-cow was 2,005 pounds in California and 1,995 pounds in Wisconsin.

The national average production per cow was 1,979 pounds of milk.  Colorado had the highest per-cow production average at 2,230 pounds.  Michigan was close behind at 2,200 pounds per cow.

The state with the biggest overall gain in milk production was Colorado, which was up more than 10% over 2017.