The national dairy herd numbers are continuing to grow and have now reached the highest number since 1994. The country currently has about 9.505 million milking cows and in 1994 the U.S. was sitting at 9.507 million animals.
According to USDA data, the lowest recorded number of dairy cows the U.S.A. ever had was back in 2005 when the number got as low as 9.050 million dairy animals.
Things are turning around though because milking cow numbers have increased every month since July 2020. In the first half of 2021, the nation’s herd grew by 144,000 head and USDA’s predicting the increase to continue into 2022 with a national herd size of 9.515 million head.
Although, with the increase of herd sizes, the total number of U.S. Dairy farms has dropped by more than half since 2003. That year there were 70,375 farms that were producing milk. Now by the end of 2020, we were at only 31,657 dairy farms.
Lastly, the average individual herd size nationwide increased from 129 cows to 300 dairy cows per farm.
