Fun Facts

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

Dairy farmers work with animal nutritionists to create recipes that meet the specific nutritional requirements of their cows. A cow’s diet is a combination of hay, grain, silage and proteins,...

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. 

Kansas is the top state for growing and storing wheat.

A finished bale of cotton weighs about 480 pounds.

There are more than 300 licensed dairy herds in Kansas with about 143,000 cows total. In 2015 cows produced about 365 million gallons of milk, making Kansas the 16th largest milk producing state.

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

Wheat flour is a good source of complex carbohydrates and contains protein. Plus, it’s low in fat and sodium.

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!

Fertilizer contains a lot of helpful nutrients, thanks to Mother Nature! Potash, which is salt from ancient evaporated oceans, is used in fertilizer to feed our soil.

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.

Grain sorghum is one of the oldest known grains. Its origins can be traced back to ancient Africa and India.

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

In 2018, farmers in Kansas planted 165,000 acres of cotton, which produced about 335,000 bales!

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

Pork tenderloin is as lean as a skinless chicken breast.

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.

One bale of cotton can make 4,312 mid-calf socks.

The average Kansas dairy cow produces about 7 gallons of milk each day. That’s more than 2,544 gallons of milk over the course of a typical year.

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.

In Kansas alone, pig farmers raised over 3.2 million pigs in 2015, producing over 600 million pounds of pork!