Fun Facts

Sows give birth (called farrowing) to an average of eight to twelve piglets at a time and will raise six to eight litters of piglets in their lifetime.

Kansas is known for its sunflowers. They provide food for insects, birds and cattle, and make great cooking oil, biofuel and a delicious snack for people!

There are 7 different breeds of dairy cattle. Farmers choose their breeds based on milk production, size and even personality.

About four percent of the land in Kansas is part of conservation or wetland reserve programs.

Milk is one of the best sources of calcium. Our bodies absorb 28 percent of the calcium found in milk, but as little as 5 percent of the calcium found in other foods like spinach.

One bale of cotton can make 1,256 pillowcases.

Compared with 50 years ago, pig farmers are using 41% less water to produce a pound of pork, with a 35% smaller carbon footprint.

98 percent of all corn farms are family-run farms.

In addition to meat, pigs provide us with lots of other products, including valves for human heart surgery, suede for shoes and clothing, and gelatin for many food and non-food uses.

It takes five to six months for a pig to reach market weight (about 265 pounds). One market hog provides about 160 pounds of pork for the grocery store’s meat case.

One 60-pound bushel of wheat provides about 42 pounds of white flour, enough for about 70, one-pound loaves of white bread.

Within an hour of birth calves are up and ready to nurse. A baby calf will drink a gallon of milk a day.

Cotton bolls, which are the puffs of white produced by cotton plants, are technically fruit.

Drink local with milk! It takes about 48 hours for milk to travel from dairy farms to the grocery store.

There are more than 29 cuts of beef that meet government guidelines for lean, including tenderloin, T-bone steak and extra lean ground beef.

The United States grows more soybeans than any other country and six out of every ten rows of soybeans are exported to other countries.

Mexico and Japan are our top international corn buyers. They buy 50 percent of U.S. corn exports.

Did you know Kansas has an official state soil? It's called Harney silt loam and it covers about 4 million acres of land in our state. 

Did you know the corn humans eat is different from the corn that cattle eat? Most of the corn people eat is sweet  corn. Cattle and other livestock eat field corn.

There are four main types of sorghum: grain, forage, biomass and sweet. Their most popular uses are: for food (grain sorghum), as livestock feed (forage sorghum), to produce bioenergy (biomass...

Cotton can be found in much more than clothes and other fabrics! Cotton by-products can be used to make paper currency, cosmetics and feed for dairy cattle and livestock.