Dairy Skim – April 2024 US Milk Production Report

Dairy Skim is a bite-size episode series where HighGround’s top analysts break down the latest dairy data release. Today, Alyssa Badger discusses the April  2024 US Milk Production Report. Customers can view the snapshot report here. Subscribe so that you never miss an episode!

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Transcript:

(0:14) Alyssa Badger:
Hello everyone, this is Alyssa Badger, High Ground Dairies Vice President of Global Operations and Insights. Happy Monday! It is a very rainy day here in Chicago, and it’s actually perfect for analyzing this April US Milk Production Report.

Well, in April, milk volumes did fall again, down 0.4% from prior year, marking the 10th consecutive month in a row of a loss. This is the smallest year-over-year decrease, however, since December of 2023. This comes due to a smaller herd, with the USDA pegging the total number of cows at 9.34 million. That’s 8,000 less than March, 74,000 had smaller than prior year, and we now have the smallest herd since September of 2019. The drop from March to April went against the seasonal trend, as cows are typically added to the U.S. herd during spring flush months, so very interesting.
The USDA made another major revision to milk cow numbers this month, with March’s total brought up 13,000 cows. If you recall last month, February totals were also revised higher.

(1:27)
U.S. cows produced 2,049 pounds of milk, that’s up 0.4% from prior year. Stronger yields in the upper Midwest really helped to bolster this number, specifically Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Texas and Kansas milk per cow dropped from March to April, which could have something to do with the impacts of highly pathogenic avian influenza on productivity there.

(1:52)
In the top five dairy states, California and Wisconsin grew milk production as yields improved in the Golden State and America’s Dairy Land. Idaho’s milk production was nearly flat, down a tiny 0.1% versus prior year, on a slightly smaller herd from March 2023. Milk per cow was unchanged. Texas, an area where new cheese capacity has come online and more is slated to commence, continues to lag with milk volumes of 2.135 billion pounds falling 3.3% against March of 2023. Further, the total was a decrease from two years ago as well. New York was unchanged across all three measures, milk per cow, herd size, and production.

We’ll be working on this analysis further into the evening. Subscribers, watch your inbox for more details and have a great night. Cheers.

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