Cooperatives Working Together completed the farm audits of its fifth herd retirement round conducted earlier this summer, resulting in the removal of 24,860 cows representing 436 million pounds of milk.
At the end of the on-farm auditing process, CWT removed 203 herds in 37 states. It had received 607 bids from 41 states during the bidding process. As has been the case with its previous herd retirement rounds, most of the cows removed were in the western regions of the country. This round also removed 275 bred heifers. The average accepted bid in this round was $6.10 per hundredweight.
CWT auditors were sent to each of the farms whose bids were accepted. Once the information submitted by the farmers was verified, each of the cows was tagged with a special CWT identifier, and the farmers were given a brief amount of time to sell their cows for slaughter. Once tags are collected by CWT, and the sales receipts for the animals are verified, farmers are issued payment, and their names are posted on the CWT website. Some names have yet to be posted, but will be in coming weeks.
The totals for each region* in this round include:
Region | Pounds of milk | Farms accepted | % of total milk reduction | Number of cows | Average bid |
1 (Northeast) | 55 million | 29 | 13% | 2,776 | $6.06 |
2 (Southeast) | 64 million | 35 | 15% | 3,987 | $6.25 |
3 (Midwest) | 70 million | 76 | 16% | 4,124 | $6.01 |
4 (Southwest) | 85 million | 36 | 19% | 5,180 | $5.98 |
5 (West) | 162 million | 27 | 37% | 8,793 | $6.35 |
TOTALS | 436 million | 203 | 100% | 24,860 | $6.10** |
* = Note that bids are grouped by region for comparative purposes, even though regional volume safeguards were eliminated in 2008. To see which states are in which region, visit www.cwt.coop/action/action_herd_map.html.
** = Represents an average of all 203 bids, not just the mean obtained by averaging the five regional averages.
