Sunday was deemed National Cow Appreciation Day, so it seems the perfect time to celebrate Virginia’s dairies and milk cows with some fun facts:

• There are about 95,000 milk cows on Virginia farms, which produce 1.73 billion pounds of milk per year—that’s about 18,095 pounds per cow.
• The top Virginia county for milk cows is Rockingham, with 23,000 cows. Franklin ranks second, with 10,000. And Augusta ranks third, with 7,600. Nationally, Virginia ranks 23^rd for its number of milk cows.
• About 98 percent of U.S. dairy farms are family owned and operated.
• Most milk travels only about 100 miles from the dairy to the store.
• There are six breeds of dairy cows. Can you recognize them? Of the six—Ayrshire, Brown Swiss, Guernsey, Holstein, Jersey, and Milking Shorthorn—the Holstein is the familiar black-and-white breed most people think of when they picture a cow. Did you know the spots on a Holstein are as individual as our fingerprints? No two cows are the same.
• A cow drinks as much as 50 gallons of water each day, about what it takes to fill a bathtub.
• Cows have a keen sense of smell, and can detect a scent up to 6 miles away.
• The average cow produces more than 2,000 gallons of milk per year, or about 100 glasses of milk a day.
• It takes about 12.5 gallons of milk to make 1 gallon of ice cream. That means one cow produces enough milk for about 160 gallons of ice cream a year.