02/12/08 Retiring the Herd

Retiring the Herd. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Cooperatives Working Together is working with dairy producers to help prices. According to National Milk Producers Federation's Chris Galen, they have expanded the herd retirement program. GALEN: When Cooperative Working Together has its next herd retirement program, there will be a new option available to producers submitting bids to retire their milking herds. They will also have the option of selling their bred heifers and that is something that has been created in response to interest on the part of producers, particularly in the western part of the U.S. especially in Idaho a number of producers were interested in having a bred heifer option so we're pleased to announce that that will be part of our next herd retirement which by the way has yet to be scheduled. Adding the bred heifer option will give producers another option according to Galen. GALEN: I think a lot of producers see having a bred heifer option as a way to make the program more effective. Obviously it's a way to take out future milk production, it's just a way to maximize the investment that producers have made in the program to help stabilize milk prices. CWT has had 5 previous retirement programs. Galen says there is a difference between the bred heifer program and the original retirement program. GALEN: In that producers submit bids to CWT for their milking herds and we accept ones that we think are reasonable and reject ones that aren't. The bred heifer option will feature a flat fee per animal and that price has yet to be determined. It won't be announced until we actually conduct our next herd retirement The program is basically an all or nothing program for the bred heifers. GALEN: If you elect to sell your bred heifers, you have to sell all of them. And that's really or logistical reasons. Imagine if we had to go to hundreds of farms, some that would have 2 or 5 or 10 or 20 bred heifers others would have more. Also this decreases the opportunity for people to gain the system  just sell out their worst potential performers and keep the best. This is just like with the milking herds, we take up every animal and we will be doing the same now with the bred heifer option. And if people don't want to do that, they want to keep their bred heifers, that's fine. They don't have to offer them as part of their herd retirement bid. For more information on the retirement program, visit the CWT website at cwt.coop. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.