May 14, 2009
Dairy group to cull cows in largest US herd buy-out
A consortium of dairy cooperatives is removing 102,898 cows from the US herd in an effort to stabilise sagging milk prices, its largest-ever herd buyout, the group announced Wednesday (May 13).
The buy-out falls short of analysts' estimates that about 300,000 cows would need to be culled from the US dairy herd through the cooperative buyout and normal sales to bring production into line with demand, said Walt Wasje of Cooperatives Working Together, the group doing the buy-out.
CWT announced it had tentatively accepted 388 bids in its latest dairy buy-out. The cows represent two billion pounds of milk production capacity and are the first of a series of herd retirements planned over the next year, a CWT release said.
The accepted herd-retirement bids represent 72 percent of the 538 bids received from 41 states and account for 64 percent of the total number of cows, the CWT said.
Starting next week, CWT auditors will begin visiting the farms whose bids were accepted, checking milk production records, inspecting the herds and tagging each cow for processing, the release said. All farms should be audited by early July and cows should begin moving off dairies by late May.
