Cost of Production for Stanchion Versus Parlor Milking in New York

Curves describing the unit cost of production by herdsize were estimated separately for stanchion and parlor milking systems using empirical data for 1995 from 403 New York dairy farms. The least cost size for stanchion barns was 120 cows, for which the total cost of producing a hundredweight of milk was $13.86, or $1.00 less than the cost of producing milk using a parlor system with 120 cows. With more than 160 cows, milk was produced at a lower cost using a parlor rather than a stanchion system. Parlors have a minimum cost that is about $2.00 less than the minimum cost of the stanchion barns.