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Dairy farmer says beef on dairy hurts overall dairy finances
A Wisconsin dairy farmer says the apparent profits from beef on dairy don’t make up for the shrinking milk checks from having too much milk.
Mike Yager milks about 325 Holsteins near Mineral Point. He tells Brownfield the market has too much milk, in part because producers are keeping cows around longer to get that extra calf, which is probably a beef calf. “They’ve got all of these people convinced that beef-crossed dairy calves are pure profit. Well, no, they’re not. You know, you still had to feed that calf’s mother and house her for another year, and people are retaining cows chasing that calf price. That is what has grown this herd 300-thousand head over the last year.”
Yager says the numbers don’t lie. “My gross milk check for January 2025 was $162-thousand and something. Gross for 2026 was $112-thousand. Fifty thousand dollars. How many black calves do we have to sell to make that up?”
Yager says the January 2024 and January 2025 production was within one thousand pounds with comparable butterfat and protein levels, yet he was paid $25.60 per hundredweight a year ago, but only $17.60 a hundredweight last month. Although 2024 was about five dollars over the Class III federal order price and 2025 about three dollars over the Class III price, it’s still a struggle to produce milk at those prices.
Yager says if you average the seven dollars per hundredweight difference statewide using the thirty-two billion pounds of yearly Wisconsin milk production, it’s about 2.7 billion pounds of milk per month or 27-million hundredweights. “Twenty-seven million hundredweight times $7.00 is one-hundred eighty nine million dollars in one month less in income (for farmers), just in the State of Wisconsin.”
Yager says, with consumers paying just as much for dairy, where is all the money going? He tells Brownfield that processors are getting low-cost milk plus the large make allowance increase granted in the latest federal milk marketing order, which is very hard to justify while producers struggle with tight margins.
Yager says it’s past time to start culling dairy cows and get the milk supply under control to bring prices back up.
AUDIO: Mike Yager explains to Brownfield’s Larry Lee why he believes beef-on-dairy calves cannot make up for the losses in milk checks