Hutchinson ? The night before his 52nd birthday, Calvin Nisly lamented to his wife that he didn’t know how long his small Reno County dairy could stay in business.

For 13 years, the 65 cows he milks each day have provided him enough money to take care of his family of six. But on this early March day, reality had set in.

His cows are losing money.

Thirteen years ago, Partridge-area dairyman Calvin Nisly had a choice: be a dairy farmer or be a school social worker. As he watched part of his Brown Swiss cow herd file into his milking parlor one afternoon, he said he never questioned whether he made the right choice.

Nisly and his wife, Andrea, were living in Switzerland, where Andrea was born. They wanted to come back to Kansas. With family already taking over his father’s dairy farm down the road, Nisly built his milking operation on a small acreage of land.

Now, his check from his marketer for the first two weeks of February was $5 a hundredweight less than what he received in January.

Mirrored by a faltering U.S. economy and a now struggling export market, milk prices have dipped 50 percent since summer after reaching record levels in 2007 and early 2008.

A year ago, milk averaged around $20 a hundredweight, which equals about 12 1/2 gallons, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. Last month, prices averaged around $12 per hundredweight.

With inputs like feed still high, that means milk costs more to produce than what the farmer needs to break even, said Mike Brouk, with Kansas State University.

Poor prices, however, can only be weathered so long.

With 70,000 dairy farms across the United States, many are looking at ways to cut costs. Some have culled cows. Others have gone out of business, said Chris Galen, spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation.

There is talk of some immediate stimulus funding coming to the nation’s dairies, said Ron Grusenmeyer, with the Midwest Dairy Association. For now, producers just have to hold on.