May 23, 2007

New York's milk production down in April 2007

Dairy herds in New York have produced 1.01 billion pounds of milk in April 2007 as milk cows declined by 2 percent or 17,000 heads less to 627,000 from the same level last year, according to Stephen Ropel, director of US Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service.

USDA says milk per cow averaged 1605 pounds, up 15 pounds from the April 2006 rate.

Dairy farmers in the Empire State received an average of US$16.50 per hundredweight of milk sold during April, up 40 cents from March and US$4.00 above April a year ago.

Overall, milk production in the 23 major producing states in April totalled 14.4 billion pounds, up 1.6 percent from April 2006. March revised production, at 14.8 billion pounds, was up 1.2 percent from March 2006. The March revision represented an increase of 11 million pounds or 0.1 percent from last month's preliminary production estimate.

Production per cow in the 23 major states averaged 1,745 pounds for April, 19 pounds above April 2006. The number of milk cows on farms was 8.28 million head, 39,000 head more than April 2006, but 6,000 head less than March 2007.