Originally Posted by Otter

It's a good point, but you know, most of our dairy herd in the US is holsteins (the big black and white cows), and there is enough genetic material in the entire US holstein herd for maybe a dozen individuals, so they are almost as good as clones, anyway. I'm not saying that is a good thing, but it seems to have worked so far. Probably partly because one of the things that has been selected for is disease resistance- a sick cow produces less milk, and so gets culled quickly.

And, yes, cloning is a bit expensive. I would think they might use it to replicate a really good breeding bull, but not the production animals themselves.