April Dairy Cow Slaughter Down, But Up
The United States Department of Agriculture released dairy cow slaughter numbers for April this afternoon, showing nearly 18,000 fewer cows were culled than in March. That a decline of 6.9%.
But, and it’s a big but, April 2015 slaughter was actually up 13,000 head over April 2014, or a jump of 5.7%.
Year-to-date, 38,900 more dairy cows met their hamburger maker in 2015 than last year, an increase of 4%.
Given tighter milk-to-fee margins, it seems that farmers are continuing to milk cows for everything they are worth if there is a margin over feed costs. But with cull cow prices exceeding $100/cwt in some part of the country, any low-producing or problem cow becomes a profitable culling candidate.
You can read the full livestock slaughter report for April here.
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/LiveSlau/LiveSlau-05-21-2015.pdf
