Dairies that participate in Montana’s pool marketing system account for most of Montana’s milk production. These dairies supply milk to Darigold’s processing plant in Bozeman and Meadow Gold’s processing plants in Great Falls and Billings. Dairies that are licensed as producer-distributors account for the rest of Montana milk production. The License Map on page 22 shows the counties in which dairies were licensed to operate in the Fiscal Year 2025.

In Fiscal Year 2025 the Montana pooling dairies produced approximately 190 million pounds of milk, down almost 10.7 million pounds from Fiscal Year 2024. Milk production declined each year between Fiscal Year 2016 to Fiscal Year 2025 at an average rate of 4.20% per year for a total decline of 33.89% of production by the end of Fiscal Year 2025, with most of the decrease occurring in Fiscal Year 2019. Fiscal Year 2016 started with the high about 280.6 million pounds and ended with a low in Fiscal Year 2025 of about 190 million pounds. This can be attributed to the decline of licensed pooling dairies from 64 to 35 and the decline of the number of milked cows from 10,986 to 6,716 in this time period.

The following charts show the size of Montana’s pooling dairy and non-pooling dairies herds and the number of dairies licensed in Fiscal Year 2016 through Fiscal Year 2025, Montana milk production from Fiscal Year 2016 through Fiscal Year 2025, and total milk production (per year and per day) for Fiscal Year 2016 through Fiscal Year 2025. The size of Montana’s milking herd is based on information provided by producers and producer-distributors in annual license applications. From Fiscal Year 2016 to Fiscal Year 2025, the number of cows being milked declined by 38.34%, while the number of dairies declined by 43.28%. The average number of cows being milked per dairy increased from 173 cows per dairy in Fiscal Year 2016 to 188 cows per dairy in Fiscal Year 2025. The increase in milked cows per dairy did not increase the overall production to offset the loss of the dairies in this time period. Montana milk production in Fiscal Year 2025 was the lowest in the 10-year period from Fiscal Year 2016 – 2025 with the average of 34.81% the lowest in the time period.