The EU dairy herd is to continue declining from 23.4m cows in 2015 to 23m cows this year. In contrast, dairy herds in Ireland and Poland have grown by approximately 42,000 and 80,000 cows respectively in the space of a year.

The latest figures from a Eurostat livestock survey conducted from May to June indicates cow numbers have dropped by 0.1% across the EU compared with 2017.

The Netherlands experienced the greatest drop, down 4%. This is largely due to increased slaughterings of cows in order to meet obligations to reduce phosphate emissions.

As a whole, cow slaughterings across both the EU suckler and dairy herds have increased by 1%, especially during the summer. Heifer slaughterings rose more dramatically, up 6% in June, which suggests a lower replacement rate for dairy cows into 2019.

Production

Slaughterings were driven for the most part by low forage availability. Despite the reduced cow numbers, milk yield is expected to increase by 1% as yield per cow moves from 7,082kg/cow to 7,151kg/cow.

This will leave total EU milk production at 166.6m tonnes, with further increases expected in 2019.

This production increase is expected to be driven mainly by an increase in cheese (1.5%), but also cream and butter production (1%). This will be helped by continued strong demand for EU dairy products. Domestic use is anticipated to rise by nearly 1% and exports by 4%.

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