Milk:
Bottling plants have been making arrangements with manufacturing plants for the extra milk that will be available over the Thanksgiving holiday period. Milk supplies are more than adequate to meet demand. Manufacturing plants have been able to absorb the increasing milk production so far. More milk will be available during the holiday as schools will be closed. However, there will be a number of schools that will not reopen again between Christmas and the New Year and then who knows after that. Demand is increasing for specialty milks for the holidays which will utilize some of the milk supply. More milk is also moving to fill Class II demand. Spot milk price is expected to decline next week as lower prices will be required to entice manufacturers to purchase available supply. Dairy cattle slaughter totaled 258,900 for the month of October according to USDA's Livestock Slaughter report released Thursday. This was an increase of 8,500 head from September but was down 27,200 from October 2019. This is the lowest October dairy cattle slaughter since 2016. It is interesting that slaughter increased over September while at the same time cow numbers increase 14,000 head as well as was reported on the milk production report.
Average Class III Prices:
| 3 Month: | $18.34 |
| 6 Month: | $17.43 |
| 9 Month: | $17.20 |
| 12 Month: | $17.13 |
Cheese:
More offers of cheese are showing up in the market as prices continue to decline. Demand is slowing, leaving more cheese available to the spot market and putting pressure on prices. Manufacturers are trying to move cheese inventory and production as quickly as they can rather than taking a chance on prices falling further. Cheese production will be busy over the Thanksgiving holiday as more milk will be available at discounted prices. Retail demand is reported to be ahead of last year, but that is being offset by weak food service industry sales.
Butter:
Supply is being pulled from inventory to supplement fresh production to meet retail demand. However, inventory is plentiful with demand unlikely to tighten supply. Churns have been active as cream is plentiful. This has allowed more fresh supply to be available to meet demand. This may result in inventory declining less than usual through the end of the year. This will be reported on the USDA Cold Storage report on Monday.
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