Let’s revisit my great-grandmother’s backyard cow for a few minutes. It sounds fun, right? To have a dairy cow living in your backyard? It turns out that having just one cow may not be the best thing for that cow. Farm size does matter!
So Betsy may not have been so happy living in that backyard by herself. I’m sure she had plenty of people taking very good care of her. (With 7 kids in the family, she probably got more attention than she wanted sometimes!) But having a “herd” of people isn’t quite the same as having a herd of other cows to hang out with.
Let’s take a look at some of the numbers of dairy cows and dairy farm sizes in the United States over the past 40-ish years.
| Year | # Dairy Cows | # Dairy Farms | Average # Cows/Farm | Average Milk Production |
| 1970 | 12 million | 648,000 | 19 | 9,751 pounds/cow/year 1,083 gallons/cow/year |
| 2006 | 9.1 million | 75,000 | 120 | 19,951 pounds/cow/year 2,216 gallons/cow/year |
| 2012 | 9.2 million | 60,000 | 153 | 21,500 pounds/cow/year 2,388 gallons/cow/year |
(Sources: United States Department of Agriculture and National Agricultural Statistics Service.)
So, to summarize…
- The total number of dairy farms in the US has gone down.
- The total number of dairy cattle in the US has gone down.
- The average dairy farm size in the US has gone up.
- The average milk production by each cow has gone up.
So what does that mean?
It means that farmers have learned how to take care of their cows better. It means dairy cows have better nutrition and better health now. It means that cows are happy in their barns or pastures. It means that the cows have very little stress or pain in their lives. All these things allow dairy cows to make more milk.
Ladies out there, if you’ve ever breastfed a baby, tried to breastfeed a baby, or know someone who has – you know that if you’re not feeling well, if you’re stressed, or if you haven’t been eating well then you don’t make much milk for your little one. (Trust me, I know this part first-hand!) If you’re not as healthy and as happy as you can be, it doesn’t matter what you try, you just won’t make much milk.
The same thing goes for the cows.
And part of what makes cows happy is living with other cows.
Farm size isn’t the only thing that makes a difference. Dairy cows need to be in a barn or on a pasture where they are comfortable and protected from predators. Farmers need to be sure their cows are well taken care of, and have the best nutrition and veterinary care possible.
We have come a long way from the days of Betsy – when one cow was able to give just a few gallons of milk a day to feed the neighborhood!
Read more about how dairy cows live:
- Taking care of dairy cows
- Milking cows is an every day job
- Feeding dairy cows
- Dairy cow housing
- Dairy calf housing
{This post was sponsored by Indiana’s Family of Farmers. All thoughts and opinions are my own.}
Other posts in this series:
- Milk from our backyard
- Food safety and milk
- Dairy farm sizes
- Food costs
Nice farm
Can you talk about how the use of bovine growth hormones has influenced the enormous increase we see in the average milk production, per cow, per year? In 2018 we are hearing that in spite of fewer cows, US farmers are dumping some portion of their milk production each year because it cannot be sold. This might indicate that the use of hormones can be reduced or perhaps eliminated. Your thoughts? Thanks very much.
Most dairy farmers in the United States do not use bovine growth hormone. Look at any dairy product you purchase, most of them will say something like “milk from cows not treated with rBST. *No significant difference has been shown in milk derived from non-rBST treated and rBST treated cows.”
The increase in milk production we have seen in dairy cows is due to a couple of things, but primarily genetics (breeding) and nutrition.
Hi, Rick. Most dairy farmers in the US don’t use bovine growth hormone in their cattle. Check out the labels of dairy products you buy – most of them will have a label that says something like: “This product contains milk from cows that were not treated with rBST. *No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from non-rBST treated cows and rBST treated cows.”
Most of the increased milk production we see in dairy cows today is due to genetics (breeding for cows with higher production) and better nutrition (using nutritionists to design an ideal ration for cows in every stage of lactation).