It wouldn’t be right to take time to salute the beef industry without doing the same for the dairy industry. After all, what goes better with a nice steak than a dish of ice cream? As a salute to the hard-working families of the dairy industry, I offer you 10 facts to wow your non-ag friends and family.
- The oldest cow ever recorded was a cow named Big Bertha. She died 3 months short of her 49th birthday on New Year’s Eve in 1993. Big Bertha was a Droimeann, a native Irish, dual-purpose breed.
- The average cow produces enough milk each day to fill 6 1-gallon jugs. That’s 55 lbs. of milk (each gallon of milk weighs 8.6 lbs.).
- A dairy cow can produce 125 lbs. of saliva a day, that’s roughly 15 ½ gallons.
- A Holstein’s spots are like a fingerprint. No two cows have the exact same pattern of black and white spots.
- According to the NASS 2012 census, there are 17.5 million dairy cattle and calves in the US on 64,098 farms.
- There are approximately 350 squirts in a gallon of milk. (Anyone else have a sore hand thinking about that?!)
- A cow gives enough milk to make 6 gallons of ice cream a day.
- There are thousands of flavors of ice cream available worldwide. The most popular are vanilla, chocolate, butter pecan and strawberry.
- There are around 2,000 varieties of cheeses available worldwide.
- The majority of dairy cattle in in the US are one of 7 breeds: Holstein (black and white or red and white), Ayrshire, Brown Swiss, Guernsey, Jersey, and Milking Shorthorn.
- Bonus – South Dakota State University lays claim to inventing Cookies and Cream flavored ice cream. Go Jacks!
