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The dairy industry is producing record amounts of milk with half as many cows as in the 1950s, thanks to advances in science, feeding, management, and vaccines. Growth hormones are less used, and the goal remains to produce good quality milk without sacrificing cow welfare.
It’s a bull market for dairy cows. The industry is producing record amounts of milk (£223bn last year), but more staggering is that the dairy industry is doing so with half as many cows (9.38m in 2020) than on which he relied on in the 1950s.
The secret is in the science. Thanks in part to bovine genome sequencing, as well as advances in artificial insemination, the amount of milk produced per cow has skyrocketed, roughly quadrupling since the 1920s. Other factors include better feeding and management, and vaccines that help keep cows healthy.
To the relief of many animal rights advocates, the use of growth hormones is less of a factor than it was 20 years ago. “There’s no question that it’s effective,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin Dairy Profitability Center. “A cow will produce more milk if provided that product, but more and more consumers have turned away from that.”
Tom Kestell, of Ever-Green-View Farm in Waldo, Wisconsin, said that despite all the advances, the goal is the same: to produce good quality milk at a good price without sacrificing cow welfare.
Fact milking:
During milk production, a dairy cow eats 100 kg of feed every day, which is mainly grains and grasses that people cannot eat.
On average, a dairy cow produces 128 glasses of milk per day, or between 7 and 9 gallons (26.5 – 34 litres).
Farmers could only milk about six cows an hour before milkmaids were invented in 1894.
