Q: I am interested in buying a cow, what is a good price for a dairy cow? A: We have paid anywhere from $900 up to $1800 but have seen prices even higher. This is in Florida where dairy cows are not that common though, and sometimes you can get lower prices in other states.

All of our cows we have had were 4H registered cows that had been shown. The best price was our first cow, an Ayrshire that we purchased for $900. That was really a steal. We totally lucked out, we didn’t even know anything about cows and everyone was telling us to buy a Jersey cow. At that time we didn’t see any for sale so we ended up with the Ayrshire and she had the best milk, so fabulous.

It still amazes me how many people still think the best family cow is a Jersey cow. I so very much disagree! We have owned two Ayrshires, a Guernsey, and a Brown Swiss and all had fantastic sweet milk that was always consistently great. We have tried Jersey milk from 7 to 10 local farms and it has never been consistently good, and never as sweet.

But I digress (as always!). To figure out what a good price is for a cow in your area you will need to look at ads for a while and see what people are selling for. Each area is different. People in Kentucky may think $2500 for a dairy cow is unheard of, but I have seen that quite often here. Luckily we haven’t had to pay that much so far.

It also depends on the breed, whether the cow is registered, bred, in milk, halter broke, et cetera.