New Zealand milk production reaches record high

New Zealand’s milk production has grown by around 3.5% for the 2025/2026 season, according to the country’s latest dairy statistics report.

The national dairy herd produced 21.8 billion litres of milk last season, a 3.5% increase on the 2024/2025 season, where production totalled 21 billion litres.

The production was achieved off 4.72 million cows, which is also a 1% rise on the 2024/2025 figures.

When processed, the 21.8 billion litres of milk produced equated to 2.02 billion kilograms of milk solids, a 4.5% on the previous season.

Breakdown

According to the report, the average herd size now sits at 460 cows/herds, a nine cow increase on the year prior.

61.1% of theses cows are Jersey/Friesian cross breeds, 23.3% are Holstein Friesians, 7.6% are Jerseys, while the further 8% is made up of other breeds such as Ayrshire.

The report also highlighted that dairy herds fell by 102 over the year, with 10,268 herds now operating across the islands of New Zealand.

Number of herds and average herd size over the years. Source: New Zealand Dairy Statistics Report comprised by LIC and DairyNZ

According to the report, 6% of all herds now have more than 1,000 cows, while 17% have more than 700 cows.

However, there is still less than 400 cows on 53% of all New Zealand farms.

Only 1.5% of farms have fewer than 100 cows, and just over 13% of farmers have less than 200 cows in total.

Distribution does vary largely, as the north island is far more populated with dairy farms, with 70% of all the herds are based here.

However, the 30% of dairy farms located in the south island tend to carry higher numbers, and account for 43% of all the dairy cows in the country.

Dairy cow distribution. Source: New Zealand Dairy Statistics Report comprised by LIC and DairyNZ

Owner/operator systems accounted for 54.6% of all dairy farms in New Zealand, meanwhile sharemilking accounted for 28.4% of dairy farms, and contract milking accounted for 14.6% of dairy farms.

These farms were paid an average price of NZ$10.44 per kg of milk solids in the 2025/2026 season (€5.25/kg/MS).

This was down from NZ$10.75 in the 2024/2025 season. However, it was NZ$0.77 above the five year average of NZ$9.67.

New Zealand KPI’s

In terms of breeding, New Zealand is forever pushing towards improving key performance indicators (KPIs).

This is evident through the 2025/2026 statistics, with the highest percentage of cows mated to artificial insemination reaching a three decade high, with over 4 millions cows inseminated to artificial insemination (AI).

84.8% of all cows were mated to AI in the 2025/2026 season, up from 81.5% in the season prior.

The mean three-week submission rate was recorded at 81.2% this year, while the mean conception rate stood at 53.5%.

The mean six-week in-calf rate rose to a record figure of 70.2%, but this ranged from 55% to 79% for 92% of all herds.

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