Hopefully the last low milk price

Just received the August advance for milk sold for the first 15 days of August. Another miserably low price of $9.97/cwt. Another record breaking low milk price for 2009. Hopefully the final milk check for August (not paid until September 17th) will be better.

AUGUST 2008 vs AUGUST 2009

Comparing August 2008 against August 2009 is a little disheartening. Aug 08 pay price was $16.03/cwt. It looks like Aug 09's pay price will be around $10.00/cwt. 40 percent LESS money and costs of production are still very high. Plus the Federal minimum wage increased 70 cents! A increase of 10% to my labor costs. The Fed's sets our pay price low and the Fed's increase our costs at every opportunity without any concern for our survival.

Since the decline in milk pay prices over the past 10 months we have to tighten our belts. This included changing from 3x milking to 2x milking. This removed eight employees from the milking barns. Other changes were in our rolled corn use. Last year we could afford to add fat to the rolled corn in the TMR. No fat added this year to the rolled corn because of the increased cost of both corn and fat in the ration. Result, cow are down seven pounds in milk production compared to last year.

So 2x vs 3x milking and no added fat in rolled corn has reduced our income 70 cents per cow per day for August 2009. Hopefully the cows and milk price will rebound later this month. It's only the first week of August, the next three weeks might be better.