Wisconsin's Licensed Dairy Herd Count Falls Below 5,000

Data from the US Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service put Wisconsin’s licensed dairy-herd total at 4,991 on August 1. The count was down by 231 operations from the same date in 2025 and amounted to about 3% of the 167,000 herds recorded in the state in 1930.

The number of farm businesses has declined over time, but Wisconsin’s aggregate milk supply has remained broadly stable for the past quarter-century. The state’s dairy-cow inventory has stayed near 1.29m animals since 2001. Average annual yield was 25,599 pounds per cow in 2025, compared with 5,140 pounds in 1933.

The average Wisconsin dairy now keeps about 260 cows. The figure reflects a larger operating scale than in earlier decades, as expanding family farms and commercial dairies have taken in animals from operators leaving the sector. The largest number of active herds was reported in Clark county, with 553, followed by Marathon with 308 and Grant with 222.

Lafayette county had 165 licensed herds and Dane county had 153. Among all 4,991 operations, 4,658 were licensed to produce Grade A milk and 333 held Grade B certification. Traditional milk-can use persists in parts of the state: 255 herds, mainly in Vernon, Clark and Monroe counties, still use cans to store and transport milk.

Wisconsin also has the United States’ largest dairy-goat inventory, at 75,000 animals. Its dairy industry includes substantial regional processing capacity, particularly for cheese, while producers are generating record quantities of milk solids from fewer operations.

Despite the reduction in licensed herds, Wisconsin remains the leading US state by number of dairy-farm operations. Its roughly 20% share of the country’s estimated 25,000 dairy herds exceeds the totals in Pennsylvania, New York, Minnesota and California. The sharpest single-year decline cited in the data occurred in 2019, when 818 farms stopped shipping milk.