America's Dairyland is Still Number 1
Saturday, March 23rd, 2019 -- 8:44 AM
(Wisconsin Ag Connection) -Although final numbers are expected to be confirmed later in the spring, it appears that America's Dairyland stayed true to its name in 2018 as the state set another record for total milk production.Preliminary figures from the USDA show that Wisconsin produced 30.5 billion pounds of milk last year, about one percent more than the previous record of 30.3 billion harvested in 2017. Milk per cow also rose to an all-time high of 24,002 pounds, up 277 pounds from the year earlier. As of January 1, there were 8,110 licensed milk cow operations in the state. That was down 691 from a year ago, and the fourth consecutive year that the herd count was below the 10,000 mark in generations.
The total number of milk cows at year's end was around 1.27 million head, about 5,000 less than the previous year--keeping Wisconsin second behind California for number of milk cows.
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