Badger View: Fewer farms mean more cows per farm. The Dairy State averaged 237 dairy cows per farm in 2024.
In 2002, there were 16,886 dairy farms in Wisconsin and the average farm family milked 142 cows. Each cow produced an average of 17,367 pounds of milk for a total of 22.2 billion pounds produced that year.
Twenty-three years later, it’s obvious things in America’s Dairyland have changed quite a bit. According to Greg Bussler, state statistician for the Wisconsin field office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the number of dairy farms in Wisconsin fell to 5,348 herds as of Jan. 1, which is 313 fewer than on Jan. 1 last year. In 2023, Wisconsin lost 455 herds. In 2019, Wisconsin lost 818 dairy farms, or more than two farms per day.
While the rate of loss has slowed, Wisconsin is still losing hundreds of dairy farms every year. Ten years ago, Wisconsin had 10,081 dairy farms — about 47% more farms than it has today.
Record milk production
Despite the declining farm numbers, Wisconsin farmers produced a record 32.1 billion pounds of milk in 2023, and they are expected to have produced a similar amount in 2024 when the final numbers are released by NASS later this year. Farmers were milking 1.265 million dairy cows on Jan. 1, 2024, compared to 1.88 million cows 40 years ago. Cows today produce a record amount of milk every year in the Dairy State. In 1985, cows produced 24.7 billion pounds of milk, or 13,166 pounds of milk per cow.
If you do the math, there was an average of 237 cows on each dairy farm in Wisconsin as of Jan. 1, 2024, and they produced 25,294 pounds of milk per cow — almost double what the average cow produced in 1985. Note how much cow numbers per farm jumped in the Dairy State in the past few years. In 2017, there was an average of 138 cows on each dairy farm, and they produced 23,725 pounds of milk per cow on 9,304 dairy farms. That means the average dairy farm is milking 99 more cows today than it was just eight years ago.
Wisconsin has been keeping track of dairy farm numbers since 1950. At that time, there were 143,000 dairy farms in the state. Today, the state is home to 58,500 farms of all types. The average farm size is 236 acres, according to NASS.
Dairy farm numbers nationwide have plummeted from 53,127 farms in 2010 to 26,290 dairy farms in 2023. That is a drop of 51% nationally in just 13 years.
Cow numbers are down as well. There were 9.4 million dairy cows nationwide in 2022, compared to 11.8 million cows in 1972. Due to the efficiency and productivity of today’s cows, nationally, the smaller number of cows are producing 226.5 billion pounds of milk, which is a record amount. That works out to 24,087 pounds of milk per cow, or about 1,000 pounds less than Wisconsin cows are averaging.
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