How many cows need to go?

Bidding has been underway for 10 days in Cooperatives Working Together’s herd retirement round No. 7. CWT officials are mum about how many cows they want/need/hope to remove from the national dairy herd, but it’s easy to see the number needs to be much bigger than in any previous round.

Our estimate is 353,970 head that are making milk we don’t have a market for. Fortunately, about one-third of them are already gone.

According to the U.S. Dairy Export Council, foreign sales in 2009 will use approximately 7 percent of all U.S. milk production, versus 10.8 percent in 2008. The 3.8 percent difference times last year’s national dairy herd of 9.315 million cows equals 353,970.

The dairy industry could eliminate that many cows if every herd in the country culled 6.2 extra animals. Another way would be to let fatally low milk prices keep slowly bleeding the entire industry to death. CWT’s latest call for herd retirement volunteers will hopefully be quicker and much less painful. There are at least two good reasons why it may work:

1. Market prices for cows and heifers are much lower than they were last year, so CWT’s resources should go farther than ever before.

2. A big part of the cow removal job was already done before CWT bidding began. According to USDA’s Dairy Market News, total dairy cow culling through March 28 was 114,300 head more than the same period in 2008, and it’s on pace to be 15,000 head higher by the time CWT bidding ends.

That leaves about 225,000 more that need to go. It’s a huge number, but it’s one that looks within reach.