Robert Scott, Ag and Natural Resources Agent for Lubbock County, interviewed on KLBK Bright & Early about the 10th annual ‘Southwest Dairy Days.’
Every year around 500 people participate in SWDD including University faculties, Extension personnel, allied industry, dairy families and local communities with interest in dairy production.
Southwest Dairy Day is a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service program that started in 2009 to provide producers the opportunity to learn about new technologies and equipment they could adopt onto their farm and to gather local communities at this family event to give them the opportunity to learn more about dairy farming.
Today Texas is the #5 state in milk production in the U.S. Texas has over half a million dairy cows and there are 9.3 million dairy cows in the U.S., so the state of Texas has close to 6% of all dairy cows in the country. In 2018 Texas produced 12.9 billion pounds of milk and around 2 billion dollars in milk cash receipts. The Texas dairy industry has been growing significantly in the last 20 years. Texas was #6 in Milk production in 2016, passing Pennsylvania state in 2018 to be #5.
Close to 75% of the milk produced in Texas is produced in the High Plains region (NW Texas). Dairies are also bigger in the area. The average size of dairies in the High Plains is around 3,500 cows, around 1,000 in Central Texas and 250 in East Texas. More information can be found by clicking here.
For full details about the Southwest Dairy Days, watch the video above.
(Article information provided by Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center.)