Dairy Knowledge

The Purdue Cooperative Extension Service works with local schools and their Vocational Agriculture programs to host many career development programs. In the old days, we just referred to them as judging contests. In reality, career development is better terminology as students receive ample training on evaluating various agriculture subjects including livestock, soils, crops, forestry, meats, dairy products, environment, and entomology.

This past week on a dairy farm near Royal Center, 82 students from 11 schools congregated to look at four classes of dairy cows and heifers that would be potential milkers in about a year. Their objective was to rank the four animals in each class in order of superiority. Then in two of the classes, they would stand before a judge and verbally justify their ranking.

In these “reasons” classes, participants would explain by recalling from visual memory which animals had superior mammary development, structural soundness, and many other positive or negative body traits. No notes. It is just them thinking on their two feet before the judge. It is an excellent confidence builder.Winners of these contests can go on to participate in state and potentially national competitions.

It is interesting that we held this competitiona little after the annual USDA Milk Production Report was published. Twenty years ago, there were 70,375 dairy herds in the U.S. In 2022, there were 27,932 herds. In the last year, there was a loss of 6% of the dairy herds.

The average US herd size reached a record-high of 337 head in 2022. It was 129 cows in 2003. During that same time, total dairy cows have declined slightly but the production per cow has increased so total production is at the highest level in history.In the past year, the number of milk cows in Indiana has fallen from 193,000 to 187,000.

Even though the statics are showing fewer producers, there are still many interested in Dairy Judging. Many of those dairy contestants do not have a dairy background but that has not stopped them from being acquainted with dairy cattle. They are still consumers of dairy products. Beyond that, the jobs available in the dairy industry are just like many others in the agriculture sector and they are still in demand.

These dairy judgers' future might not be milking cows, but they may be well-vested and skilled to obtain other related jobs in agriculture.