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I love dairy cows. Most readers of this column know this. I think I have probably conveyed the fact that dairy cows are as complex as the dairy industry itself. Today, I would like to share with you some interesting dairy trivia.
* Dairy cows first arrived in America with the Jamestown settlers in 1611. The most common breed of dairy cow in the United States is the Holstein, but Jersey cows produce milk with the highest butterfat content. The average cow produces about 350,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.
* Tank trucks for transporting fluid milk were first introduced in 1914.
* A cow has one stomach, but it has four distinct compartments. The average dairy cow weighs 1,400 pounds and consumes about 50 pounds of dry matter (e.g. hay, grass, silage, grain) each day. She also drinks between 30 to 50 gallons of water each day --about a bathtub's worth.
* Cows have 24 teeth and chew at least 50 times per minute. They spend 10 hours a day chewing their cud in order to aid in digestion.
* Cows have an acute sense of smell and can smell something up to six miles away.
* Cheese, please! Americans eat, on average, 39.9 pounds of cheese per year (2024 stats). This is about 10 pounds higher than it was in 2000. The most common cheeses are mozzarella and cheddar. Seems like a lot of cheese, but the United States doesn't even make the top 15 cheese consuming countries. European countries lead the way. Greece is the leader with 68 pounds. France consumes 53 pounds per capita, followed by Malta with 48 pounds of cheese per capita.
* The tradition of making Swiss cheese in 200-pound wheels began in the Middle Ages when the Swiss government taxed cheesemakers on the number of pieces they produced rather than according to the total weight of the cheese they made.
* Cheddar cheese was first developed in the town of Cheddar Gorge, England, more than 400 years ago.
* Plastic milk bottles were first introduced in the U.S. in 1967. (A very good year, by the way)
* To get the same amount of calcium provided by an 8-ounce glass of milk, you would have to eat 2 ¼ cups of broccoli, 6 ¾ oranges or six slices of wheat bread.
* Why does milk work better than water cooling your mouth after eating something spicy? The protein in milk called casein cleanses the taste buds.
* A rather sad fact to share is that fluid milk consumption in the U.S. has dropped about 48% since 1975.
* The dairy farmers across America send many thanks to consumers for buying milk, cheese and other dairy products!
Mary Smallsreed is a member of the Trumbull County Farm Bureau and grew up on a family dairy farm in northeast Ohio.