“It’s been building for a long time – milk prices and lack of equity, but the drought has tipped us over the edge,” Mr Treloar said.

The duo sharefarm, milking about 440 Holstein cows.

This week they shot to national prominence after a Facebook live video of Mr Treloar's daughter – third-generation dairyfarmer and journalist Casey Treloar – sadly outlining the forces behind their decision to sell their cows went viral.

Mr Treloar said in the past two years grain costs had risen about 50 per cent to $460 a tonne, lucerne hay was up by about one-third, and cereal hay had almost doubled from $180/t to $350/t.

Plus production of hay and silage in their district was down 25pc this year, he said.

Mr Treloar said electricity prices had also doubled in the past five years, leading to a “tight margin” in their operation.

They have already reduced heavily the numbers of Holstein cows milked, but Mr Treloar said even cull cow prices were down on a few years ago.

“We’ve been very close a couple of times to pulling the pin but we pushed on, hoping things would get better,” Mr Dohnt said.

Mr Treloar said the situation had been steadily getting worse for about the past decade.

“We’d find a glimmer of hope and run with it, but we’ve run out of options,” he said.

This week Mr Treloar will move into a new job, managing a neighbouring dairy farm, while Mr Dohnt will focus on the hard task of winding up the operation.

Mr Treloar estimates, across the year, they receive about 41 cents a litre from processors, while it costs about 50c/L to produce the milk.

He said the prices did not reflect the value of their milk or the rising cost of production, with the bulk of their milk sold into the domestic market in Adelaide or used to make value-added products, such as cheese.

“Why aren’t we getting paid comparative to what they’re getting?” he said.

“In Qld, they pay a lot higher price than we get here.

“When grain prices go up, the bread price lifts but we cop the high price and have nowhere to pass it on.

“The industry could wear the drought and grain prices if the milk price had been solidly profitable in the good years, but it’s been marginal in the best years.”

Mr Treloar said the issues in the dairy industry could be traced back to deregulation at the turn of the century.

“It’s been a race to the bottom since then, with processors using the $1/L milk as an excuse not to pay us more,” he said.

Mr Dohnt said there was an imbalance in the retail world where bottled water cost more than milk.

Ms Treloar has grown up in the dairy industry and, as she went out to get the cows “probably for the last time”, she was unaware the impact her video would have.

With nearly 1 million views, the video has sparked conversation in mainstream media and has led to an invitation to meet with Agriculture Minister David Littleproud.

“I saw the opportunity to speak up when other people might not have the chance,” Ms Treloar said.

She said $1/L milk was not the sole problem of the industry, but it contributed. 

“It has devalued our product at the domestic level,” she said.

“Processors have lost some power in what they expect supermarkets to pay.”