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Cows lie on sand bedding at Furnace Hill Holsteins in Lebanon, Pa. Cow comfort improvements like sand bedding could help Pennsylvania increase its per-cow milk production, which lags other top dairy states.

Here’s a paradox — Pennsylvania is a big dairy state, but its cows aren’t all that productive.

The average Pennsylvania cow makes almost 21,300 pounds of milk per year.

That’s 12% below the national average and 31st in the nation.

Over the past decade, the state has fallen ever farther behind its peers and now ranks last in milk per cow among the top 10 dairy producers.

Farm advisers say Pennsylvania is lagging because its dairies have stayed small and failed to adopt cutting-edge management practices to the extent seen in other states.

How much milk a cow makes is a key factor in farm efficiency and profitability.

Getting a few extra pounds from the farm’s existing cows is cheaper than adding a cow to the herd.

And increasing milk per cow reduces the farm’s production cost per hundredweight — a concern as milk prices recede from last year’s highs.

“When I look at our lagging milk per cow, it is one of the things that’s driving our cost of production higher in Pennsylvania,” said Mike Hosterman, an ag business consultant for Horizon Farm Credit.

Thanks to breeding and management changes, U.S. milk yield has grown dramatically in the postwar era.

Pennsylvania’s per-cow production has doubled since 1975, and for a long time, it tracked closely with the national average.

But about 20 years ago, Pennsylvania slid into a turtle pace as other states raced ahead.

“This is not just a new thing,” said Joseph Bender, an assistant professor of clinical dairy production medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “This has gone on for a while.”

Understanding why Pennsylvania milk production is growing slowly could help farmers accelerate in the state, and across the Northeast.

New York is the only state in the region — and one of only 14 nationally — that beats the U.S. milk-per-cow average.

Size v. Skill

As with so much in Pennsylvania dairy, the discussion starts with farm size.

The average Pennsylvania dairy has 93 cows. That’s a third of the national figure and one of the smallest average herd sizes in the country.

Urbanization, the Appalachian Mountains and regional market conditions — among other factors — have limited opportunities for farms to expand.

Though bigger farms aren’t necessarily the most profitable, farm size correlates strongly with milk per cow, Bender said.

Compared to small farms, large farms have clear advantages for making milk.

They can more easily afford new facilities and equipment. They can create more feed recipes for different groups of cows, providing tailored nutrition.

And because they rely on hired labor, they have the best opportunity to maintain a consistent milking schedule, and to milk three times a day instead of twice.

But it’s important to remember that large operations got big because they were good at dairy farming. The biology of cows is the same across farms, so management ultimately drives much of the difference in per-cow milk yield, Bender said.

“The most profitable operations aren't necessarily driven by size, but they're driven by volume of milk with strong components and a strong cost control,” Hosterman said.

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This graph shows the pounds of milk produced by the average cow in the U.S.’ top 10 dairy-producing states from 2010 to 2022. Pennsylvania fell farther behind its peers than it already was, while Michigan surged ahead. Per-cow milk production affects farm efficiency and profitability.

Learning From No. 1

A case in point is Michigan, which leads the nation in milk per cow and has been widening its lead for the better part of a decade.

The average Michigan cow annually produces 6,000 pounds of milk more than the average Pennsylvania cow — almost 30% more.

Michigan’s average herd size is a bit larger than the national average, and the state’s farmers expanded their herds and upgraded their buildings faster than their Pennsylvania counterparts.

But the variation in milk per cow across Michigan farms is also fairly narrow.

“Our farmers, no matter what their size, have been pushing hard,” said Phil Durst, a Michigan State University Extension educator.

Hosterman said the Pennsylvania Holstein herds he’s familiar with seem to have a wide range of milk production.

Michigan has also made the most of some unusual advantages.

The state’s dairy processors disallowed the milk-promoting hormone rBST in 2008, earlier than some other states. The move was controversial, but it spurred farmers to sharpen their management, Durst said.

In the early 2000s, Michigan also became the home of some successful dairy farmers from Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands who decided they could not stay in Europe if they wanted to expand their businesses.

These innovative newcomers made an impression on the native Michiganders.

“They saw that you could do things differently and be successful, and they went after that, and so it made everybody better,” Durst said.

Michigan has excelled, for example, at having low somatic cell counts. High counts can indicate udder infection — not conducive to milk production.

Michigan’s somatic cell average is a cool 150,000, and Durst isn’t sure which farms are keeping the average even that high.

“The farms I deal with are really working to be below 100,000,” he said.

Michigan farmers also emphasize cow comfort, which contributes to cow longevity and productivity.

Sand has become a popular bedding option. In addition to being comfortable for cows, it has reduced somatic cell counts, Durst said.

Hosterman sees comfort as a place many Pennsylvania farms could improve.

“Cow comfort in an old stanchion barn is not what we see in some of our newer freestall barns,” he said. “And does that drive milk production? The answer’s yes. We all know that.”

To be clear, facilities aren’t always the issue. Bender said he’s often asked to help farms where the cows are producing the same amount of milk in a new barn as they were in the old one.

What Pennsylvania Can Do

Bender thinks Pennsylvania can accelerate its per-cow milk growth, but the gains won’t come from lax dairy management.

“We’ll have to do something fundamentally different than what we’ve done in the past,” he said.

Crucially, Pennsylvania will need to boost reproductive efficiency. The state’s annualized 21-day pregnancy rate, which indicates the speed at which cows get pregnant, is 16%.

That’s 4 percentage points lower than the national average. Each point is worth about 2 1/2 pounds of milk per cow per day.

Below 23%, a farm is losing money on milk produced and calves born for the year, and heifers may need to be added to the herd, Bender said.

A lot of technology is available now to aid reproduction, and southeastern Pennsylvania, the state’s dairy heartland, has a good number of veterinarians who can help farmers with it.

“It’s getting hard to make excuses for why Pennsylvania lags behind,” Bender said.

Farms can also make milk yield gains at the end of a cow’s life by making smart culling decisions.

Some of the highest-producing farms Bender works with are able to remove cows based on their profitability rather than biological problems such as mastitis or lameness.

Ideally, a dairy could keep enough animals that it wouldn’t need to hold onto every heifer — including the 15% to 20% that are likely to be inferior producers.

“Those farms are few and far between,” Bender said.

Feed also offers tools to improve milk production.

Many small Pennsylvania farms don’t have enough land to feed their cows for high production.

Faced with the possibility of purchasing feed, farmers must decide whether it’s better to limit feed costs or milk production.

A nutritionist can help the farm determine how much forage acreage is needed to get the best milk yield, Bender said.

Farms with limited land also risk abrupt shifts in forage quality, which in some cases can disrupt production for a cow’s entire lactation, he said.

Some Pennsylvania farms have also been slow to shift away from alfalfa-corn silage rations to higher-energy diets with triticale, corn silage and rye.

“The quality of forage is probably the biggest gain we've seen in the last 15 years, where other states have really increased and we haven't,” Bender said.

Farms may find other areas, such as transition cow management, where they can improve their procedures.

But one of the most important practices for boosting milk per cow isn’t technical at all.

It’s attitude.

Bender has found that improving milk per cow requires the farmer to commit to the dairy and treat it as the farm’s main enterprise.

If the farmer has a diversified operation or is away from the farm a lot, making progress on milk yield will be tough, he said.

In Michigan, Durst sees a focus on productive cows as part of a state dairy mindset of growth fostering more growth.

“When there’s a predominant positive attitude,” Durst said, “people feed off of that and they do better.”

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