Four times each year, USDA publishes “Prices Received for Milk Cows.” The federal agency posted its new average value at $2,870 per head, in late April 2025. That’s the highest figure in the history of the series published by USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) in its monthly Agricultural Prices report. As dairy farmers can appreciate, that $2,870 figure represents a baseline price for replacements, as premium pregnant heifers are fetching upward of $4,000 per head at auction these days.

Two different mountain peaks

When looking back into dairy history, October 2014 was the very first time that dairy replacement values for soon-to-be cows pushed past the $2,000 figure. That represented an extremely high peak from the January 2013 average that was a meager $1,370 per head.

The reason prices climbed from $1,370 per head in January 2013 to $2,120 in October 2014 was entirely different from the current scenario. From 2013 to 2014, mailbox milk prices received by dairy farmers moved from $20.06 per hundredweight (cwt.) to a record $24.04 per cwt. With record profit margins, dairy farmers were scouring the countryside for more heifers to make more milk.

Even though milk prices started a downward trend in 2015, dairy replacement values remained rather strong throughout the next year. In July 2015, USDA pegged the average price for dairy replacements at $2,030 per head.

From there, values began a slow descent and eventually tumbled to $1,140 per head by April 2019. That was roughly $1,000 under the cost to raise a replacement, meaning that dairy producers were losing $1,000 on each heifer that they kept.

Those economics ushered in the beef semen on dairy cow movement. Then, the seeds were sown for the present day’s scarcity situation as dairy farmers shifted to making animals headed straight to the second career for beef. In short, the collective dairy farm community pivoted too fast to capitalize on record beef prices.

The new price mountain peak

After bottoming out at $1,140, raising heifers was a losing proposition as average prices never moved past $1,400 until April 2022. Even at those prices, dairy farmers were still losing $600 or more on raising each heifer.

Beginning in April 2022, heifer prices started making a slow, steady climb from $1,570 to $1,730 by year’s end. In 2023, dairy replacements made another shift moving up to $1,850 throughout the year as illustrated in the graph.

That’s when “alarm bells of scarcity” began figuratively ringing as USDA valued heifers at $1,890 in January 2024, a price that eventually vaulted to $2,600 per head by year’s end. Unlike 2014, this was driven by scarcity rather than great milk prices, because the 2024 mailbox price only averaged $21.22 per cwt. compared to $24.04 per cwt. in 2014.

The narrative is much the same this year. Milk prices are not that robust but dairy heifers are precious as inventories stand at a 20-year low. Hence the new record price of $2,870 per head this April. This is welcome news if one’s a seller, but a tougher cash-flow proposition for buyers.