The cost of butter.

Bella,our jersey milk cow.

   As a former dairy producer I've always known that dairy farmers get ripped off terribly at the price they are paid for the milk they produce. It has really been demonstrated to me recently. Our little Jersey cow is not a high producing cow. In all honesty, we have had goats that milked almost as much as she does. She has one great saving grace however, her milk is very high in butterfat. We do not "push" our cow to produce more milk or butterfat. She gets a very reasonable diet of pasture in season or good well made hay along with a small amount of grain at this time of year. From this modest feed she gives us around two and a half gallons of milk per day. This is about a fourth of what cows in most commercial dairies are expected to produce but as I said her milk is very rich and creamy.
   Each day Ann places Bella's milk in wide mouth gallon jars. From a day's production we will use about a half gallon after skimming the cream off as whole milk and the cream from it for our coffee,etc. This leaves two gallons which we skim the cream off of and make butter from it. It will produce about a pound and a half of butter. The skim milk is then used to make mozzarella cheese and those two gallons produce about 1 3/4 pounds of fresh cheese. From the whey produced making the mozzarella a whey cheese called mysost can be made which will yield about another 1-1 1/2 pounds.SO.... lets add this up.

   1/2 gallon whole milk.....$2.00                                    Feed for Bella per day
  pint cream......................$1.50                                     hay...............................$2.50
  1 1/2 pounds butter........$5.00                                     grain.............................$1.50
  1 3/4 p. mozzarella.........$5.00                                         total..........................$4.00
 1 1/2 p. mysost...............$5.00
   Total..........................$18.50
 This is from about 20-22 pounds of milk, 2 1/2 gallons. Farmers are currently getting about $17-$18 per one hundred pounds or about twelve gallons of milk.  Convert that using the figures I did for our production and the farmers 100 pounds of milk will yield about $88.00 worth of product. This explains why I no longer farm for a living!
  Please note that I have never seen mysost in a store here so I'm guessing on that price. The other prices are what we have paid though not recently as we don't need to buy any dairy products!