February base milk prices improved on the January milk price, with increases across the board for all co-ops.

Again there are unconditional bonuses included in Glanbia, Aurivo and Dairygold’s milk price that really push them ahead of the rest for February supplies.

Remember, the February cheques are small relative to the next four months that are coming.

A bit like the hurling, the league in February doesn’t mean much – it’s March, April, May and June when the season is won and lost for the dairy farmer. Bringing up the rear end of the February monthly league is Tipperary Co-op as it struggles to stay with the early 2022 pace-setters.

Dairy commodity prices continue to move up as global demand continues and supply is not keeping up. Prices are at 10-year record highs but as every farmer knows too well so are input prices, especially for inputs such as fertiliser and diesel.

There was some delay in getting milk cheques to some suppliers over last 10 days. The double bank holiday was blamed.

Boherbue Co-op hadn’t finalised price returns as we went to press.

Conditional bonuses are not included in the base price. For example, the west Cork co-ops have a SCC bonus for milk under 200,000 cells/ml and Lakeland Dairies also has a conditional bonus.

New column

Again just to remind readers we introduced a new column last month (January payout) to capture a rolling milk cheque for a typical spring milk supply pattern, based on national milk solids. In March we will include the March milk cheque on top of the January and February milk cheque in this column.