Mike Pearson takes a look at the changing dairy industry.

A study out of the University of Illinois by two researchers found some interesting trends when it comes to dairy farms. They examined the top 15 producing dairies.

The research broke the dairies into two categories: traditional and modern dairies.

This primarily meant the Midwest/Northeast dairies and the dairies that have started in the South/West in the last 30 years.

Traditional dairies are primarily are under 400 head (Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota).

While the average herd size is much bigger in the modern dairies with farms ranging from 900-2200 cattle (Colorado, New Mexico, California, Texas, Idaho, Washington, Arizona).

One interesting finding in the research was that the eight traditional states produce nearly as much as the total pounds of milk as the seven modern states.

Milk yield is climbing in traditional as they adopt some of the ways in the modern dairies.

However, herd size is shrinking in both types of dairies due to technology and that is being tied to Genomic technology -- which helps pick out the cattle with the most milk producing potential.

Farm Progress America is a daily look at key issues in agriculture. It is produced and presented by Mike Pearson, farm broadcaster and host of This Week in Agribusiness.