Manufactured Cow's Milk - Prices?

[wharris]

The reason i started this thread was because, if I could get a bulk price, i am good for 10-20USD a week at this point and would like to get as much milk as I can. 

The really really big guys have to be paying like .50/gal.  I would be happy with double that.

I just wonder what kind of quantity i would need to use to get to that price.

[linuxboy]

Current wholesale price is about $11 per 100 lb of milk, FOB. That's about 94 cents/gal for whole milk. You need to buy one contract to get that price, which is 4 tankers, or 200,000 lbs.

That's enough to make about 22,000 lbs of cheese :O

Your better bet might be to see if a local store will give you a discount for an annual volume commitment and regular orders.

[wharris]

Great info again Linuxboy. 
Where do you get this information?  Do you have a link or some reference?

[linuxboy]

As an aside, wholesale milk prices were $22/100 lbs last year. It's really tough for farmers right now. $11/100 lbs is not even break even. A good dairy cow gives about 50 lbs/day.

[linuxboy]

I got my price data from http://future.aae.wisc.edu/tab/prices.html

The contract size is what I recall from the CME commodities details; it's what the very huge producers pay via a brokerage/auction. You might be able to find smaller contract sizes if you deal with a dairy broker directly, but then there's the issue of transportation.

[wharris]

I will say that milk prices have really come down.  I bought 13 gallons at 1.98/gal at Sams Club yesterday.

Linuxboy, you say wholesale orders are on order of 200,000lbs? 
Lets see, at 8.6lbs a gallon, that is about 23,256 gallons per order.
at 11USD/100lbs, that works out to about .11USD/lb or (~.95USD/gal)

I'm good for 20 of those gallons a week.  But that leaves 23,236 gallons.

There are 383 other members in this forum,  If each of you also pitch in for 20 gallons, that will use up 7660 more gallons in that order..

That leaves 15576 gallons. 

John, we need 779 more members ASAP. 

I want my .95USD/gal milk!!!

[the_stain]

King Soopers (a Colorado grocery chain affiliated with Kroger) has milk on sale right now for $1.77/gal.  "Normal" price seems to be $3.29/gal, with sales happening for $2.49 pretty often.  $1.99 is not uncommon but this is the first time I've seen lower than that (since the 1990s anyway! lol)

[DeejayDebi]

We have an organic food co-op a few towns away that has raw milk for $3/gallon if you join BUT you have to pay $250 per person and work 400 hours a year in the store or one day a week per person also. Just doesn't seem reasonable to me. If I gave up one day a week when could I make cheese? Or anything else for that matter?

[CBBaron]

My 1.99/gal is from Sam's Club.  My 4.00/gal is from Hartzler family dairy

Wayne,
Where have you found Hartzler milk for $4/gal? I've seen it at Heinens and Whole Foods but at $4 per half gallon.

Still it is nice to have available. I will be trying it for some cheese in the future. Did you see a difference vs the normal homo milk?

Craig

[wharris]

I go to the store itself in Wadsworth, and buy the 5/gal institutional size container for $20

[CBBaron]

I go to the store itself in Wadsworth, and buy the 5/gal institutional size container for $20

Good to know.
I guessing that should be fresher milk also. 

Craig

[Cheese Head]

Here in Texas, manufactured store bought cow's milk is averaging USD1.99 per 1 US gallon (USD0.52/liter), poor farmers !