06/09/08 Another CWT dairy herd retirement round

Washington Ag June 9, 2008 As dairy farmers suffer from dramatically higher costs of production, Cooperatives Working Together, CWT, is conducting another herd retirement round. Chris Galen of the National Milk Producers Federation says there are changes in this the fifth retirement round since 2003. Galen: "In addition to our typical herd retirement effort where we remove milking cows this time we are also offering a bred heifer option where producers will have the option to sell us their bred heifers in addition to their milking herds. You can't just sell off heifers you have to include the bred heifers as part of your overall bid. And we are not going to accept the bred heifers if we don't accept the bid for the milking herd." Unlike past herd retirements, regional safeguard limits will not be utilized and, therefore, CWT bidders will not be competing regionally, but nationally. Galen says bids are now being accepted from CWT members. Those bids will be accepted through June 30th. The bids will be reviewed in early July - with field auditors heading to each accepted farm mid-month to begin the cow removal process. For more information visit www dot cwt dot coop (http://www.cwt.coop/) or call 888-INFO-CWT. I'm Bob Hoff.