Milk production for the New Zealand dairy season just ended was up by more than 2.4 percent on the season prior.
Good weather in spring has meant strong production for much of the season, NZX's Robert Gibson says. Photo: Supplied / Westland Milk Products
Figures from the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand shows national production from 1 June 2018 to 30 May 2019 lifted to 1,883,559 tonnes of milk solids.
An analyst from from the dairy insight group of NZX, Robert Gibson, said it was up about 1.5 percent compared to the five-year average.
"The last season was predominantly a strong spring, that's helped to offset any dry conditions that we had in the second half of the season... so [there were] very very good weather conditions at the start of the season right up until December which sort of fed through into milk production, even to the start of January," Mr Gibson said.
Mr Gibson said the so far outlook for the 2019/2020 season was looking positive.
He said May was typically the peak month, where farmers sent any surplus cows to be culled, but this season farmers appeared to be retaining more cows for milking.
"Figures from the New Zealand Meat Board show that cull cow numbers are back by about 30,000 head on the previous year... so with more cows, or a slight lift in cows being retained, for the coming season we'd expect similar to slightly up milk production going into next season," Mr Gibson said.