Dairy farming profits

workaccount

Hi,
I'm just trying to work out how much money there is in dairy farming. Farmers are always complaining that they have little money but most of them seem to be well off with Landcruisers and the like.

If you buy 2 litres of milk in Aldi or Dunnes you get each litre for 82c. How much of this goes to the farmer and how much milk do you get per cow per day?

If you had 500 cows for example and each cow gave 10litres a day that would be 1500 euro a day assuming they were getting about 30c per litre.

I suppose it would be hard to work out the expenses involved - cost to grow grass, keep indoors during winter etc.

Sam Kade

I don't know many dairy farmers with new landcruisers. There are very few farmers milking 500 cows mainly because its impossible to get enough land in one block in Ireland also milk quotas restrict herd size. Like any business there are costs. Cows don't milk all year round they only milk for 10 months reaching a peak yield at the third month then declining. When cows are dry for 2 months they still need feeding. I can tell you that a dairy farmer will make reasonable income from may to october and very little income for the rest of the year which means that when the income from these months are spread over 12 months it makes any profit small.