I like this report put together by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. They get their data from the Wisconsin Ag Statistics Service. It puts it in an easier to read format.
Wisconsin’s dairy business is off to a strong start in the new year, with milk production up 5 percent, totaling 2 billion pounds in January. In addition to increasing milk production per cow, which now is 70 pounds higher than a year ago, state dairy producers also boosted cow numbers in Wisconsin to 1.24 million head, an increase of 1,000 head from the previous month which puts the state’s total dairy cow count at 5,000 head higher than January 2005.
Cheese production also posted a positive 3.2 percent gain in January, with a total of 201.9 million pounds produced versus the same month a year ago. This positive upswing in both milk and cheese production comes on the heals of a solid year of milk production growth of 3.5 percent during all of 2005, ending the year with more cows than a year earlier for the first time in 16 years.
Nationally, cheese production for January totaled 764.3 million pounds, up just 1.3 percent from last year. Wisconsin’s January cheese production increase accounted for over 65 percent of the 9.6 million pound total increase across the nation for the first month of 2006. Wisconsin also increased its butter production to 43.9 million pounds in January, a 13 percent increase over a year ago, mirroring the national butter growth percentage of 13 percent compared to the same month in 2005.
Only two cheese producing states reported lower cheese production in January, compared to a year ago. California posted a negative growth of 0.3 percent and Illinois came in at negative 3.4 percent. This is the second month in a row that California has reported a decline in cheese production. The last time California’s cheese production declined compared to the same month a year earlier was September, 1998.