Analysts are crunching the numbers on the U.S. dairy herd, looking for signs of expansion.
“There’s two factors going on. We have this wide-spreading avian flu. It’s now expanded into California, and we’ve had buyers get very fearful about future production and have been front-end loaning their purchases well into the future because they’re concerned about the future supply. However, the USDA, as of the last production report, said that production grew slightly. So, there’s a disconnect between the fear in the market from avian flu and what the USDA was reporting. Are they right, or are we going to see some bigger contractions of supply coming? That’s the first thing,” said Shawn Hackett.
Hackett says right now, dairy heifers supplies are extremely tight, and he worries that if more demand were to appear, dairy farmers would have a hard time filling those orders.
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