Milk
Annual milk production, production per cow, price received, and value of production, every state and the United States, plus the milk cow inventory including Idaho's county breakdown, from USDA NASS Quick Stats.
Figures
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Milk Production, Disposition, and Income and Agricultural Prices, milk. Data period 2026. Published .
| Measure | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Milk production2025 | 18.26 billion pounds | 2025 |
| Milk production per cow2025 | 25,571 pounds per head | 2025 |
| Milk price received2025 | $21.00 per cwt | 2025 |
| Milk value of production2025 | $3.8 billion | 2025 |
| Milk cow inventory2026 | 725,000 head | 2026 |
Pages built on this dataset
Publisher
- Organization
- USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
- Publisher’s dataset
- Milk Production, Disposition, and Income and Agricultural Prices, milk
- File or API used
- https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/
- Methodology
- https://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Milk_Production/
Coverage
- Geography
- 50 states, the United States, and Idaho counties
- Time coverage
- 1867-2026
- Update frequency
- Annual
- Published
- May 2026
- Retrieved
- September 15, 2026
- License of the records
- Public domain. U.S. federal government work.
- Rows
- 23,822 observations, 1867-2026
Measures
| Measure | What it measures | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Milk production | Milk production, measured in pounds, for the year. | pounds |
| Milk production per cow | Milk production per cow in the herd, for the year. | pounds per_head |
| Milk price received | Season-average price received per hundredweight of milk, for the marketing year. | usd per_cwt |
| Milk value of production | Milk production valued at the season-average price received, for the year. | usd |
| Milk cow inventory | Milk cows kept for milk production, counted January 1. | head |
Caveats
- This is a sample survey estimate, not a full enumeration, and is revised in later NASS releases.
- Understand Idaho pulls this series through USDA's Quick Stats programmatic API, which requires a registration key. The interactive tool linked above needs no key and returns the same figures.
- Price received is for the marketing year rather than the calendar year, so it can be published on a different schedule than that year's production figures.
- Not every state publishes a full-year total in every year; a state missing from a given year was not surveyed for an annual figure that year, not withheld.
- The milk cow inventory is counted each January 1 and is reported for Idaho counties in most years; figures for a small number of counties are withheld in some years to avoid disclosing individual operations.
How to cite
Understand Idaho, “Milk Production, Disposition, and Income and Agricultural Prices, milk”, compiled from USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Milk Production, Disposition, and Income and Agricultural Prices, milk. Retrieved September 15, 2026. https://understandidaho.com/data/nass-milk/.
Cite USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service directly for the figures themselves.
This page was last updated .