You know you’re in the Dairy State when you see the silos shooting in the air next to the Dairy Cattle Center, just one part of the Integrated Dairy Facilities located on the UW–Madison campus. Cows housed at the Dairy Cattle Center are moved between facilities as needed based on the facility’s current teaching and research demand. This on-campus farm space houses 84 milking cows and averages about 90 pounds of milk per cow each day. That’s a total of about 7,500 pounds of milk made on campus every day of the year! 

Jessica Cederquist, the research program director for the integrated cattle hub, says that the UW is part of a co-op with Foremost Farms and sells milk daily to that group. Based on where the UW’s Grade A milk is shipped, Cederquist estimates that the majority is used for cheese production (“Like a true Wisconsin dairy!”).

But hold your Holsteins! The 84 campus cows are only part of the herd. Did you know that the full UW dairy herd managed by the Ag Research Stations — officially named the Allenstein Dairy Teaching Herd — is made up of more than 2,100 animals, located across four different research facilities in Wisconsin? There are dairy cows in Madison, Arlington, Prairie Du Sac, and Marshfield. On average the mature cows in this herd produce a rolling average of about 31,500 pounds per cow in every lactation. This means that the UW Dairy Farms collectively ship over 90,000 pounds of milk every day!

This post is an updated version of an article written by WFAA, which originally ran in the Flamingle.