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Female band serenading cows — August 1930: The Ingenues, an all-girls band and vaudeville act, serenading the cows in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Dairy Barn in a scientific test of whether the cows would give more milk to the soothing strains of music. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHi Image ID 2115.

Found the following data while poking around at the National Agricultural Statistics Service for numbers to accompany our Dairyland Diversity project. The number of cows in Wisconsin peaked during World War II and has more or less fallen ever since.

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Chart: Wisconsin’s ever-more-efficient milk industry

by Kate Golden, Wisconsin Watch
May 6, 2010

<h1>Chart: Wisconsin’s ever-more-efficient milk industry</h1>
<p class="byline">by Kate Golden, Wisconsin Watch <br />May 6, 2010</p>
<br />
<figure class="wp-block-image wp-caption center" id="attachment_3856"><img src="https://wisconsinwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Females-serenading-cows-whs-WHi-2115.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-3856" title="Female band serenading cows" /><figcaption>August 1930: The Ingenues, an all-girls band and vaudeville act, serenading the cows in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Dairy Barn in a scientific test of whether the cows would give more milk to the soothing strains of music. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHi Image ID 2115.</figcaption></figure>
<p>Found the following data while poking around at the <a href="http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Wisconsin/index.asp" target="_blank">National Agricultural Statistics Service</a> for numbers to accompany our <a href="https://wisconsinwatch.org/tag/dairyland-diversity/" target="_blank">Dairyland Diversity</a> project. The number of cows in Wisconsin peaked during World War II and has more or less fallen ever since.</p>
<p>
Fewer cows, more milk<br />
<a href="#"><img alt="Fewer cows, more milk " src="http://public.tableausoftware.com/static/images/Wis_dairyherdsizeandmilkproduction1924-2009-Fewercowsmoremilk_rss.png" height="100%"></a></p>
<div style="width: 599px;height: 22px;padding: 0px 10px 0px 0px;margin-top: -6px;color: black;font: normal 8pt verdana,helvetica,arial,sans-serif">
<div style="padding-left: 483px"><a href="http://www.tableausoftware.com/public?ref=http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Wis_dairyherdsizeandmilkproduction1924-2009/Fewercowsmoremilk" target="_blank">Powered by Tableau</a></div>
</div>
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2 replies on “Chart: Wisconsin’s ever-more-efficient milk industry”

Hrishi Mittal says:

June 22, 2010 at 9:55 AM

Kate, that’s a really interesting and amusing graph. Mark Perry’s blog post [1] with the price data added makes it even more interesting. Some of the comments on that post suggest that there may be negative health effects due to the means used for increasing the cows’ productivity. What are your thoughts on that?

[1] http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/05/fewer-cows-more-milk-powered-by-tableau.html
Pingback: The Pretty Graph Blog » Setting graph margins in R using the par() function and lots of cow milk

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Chart: Wisconsin’s ever-more-efficient milk industry

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Kate GoldenMultimedia director and reporter

2 replies on “Chart: Wisconsin’s ever-more-efficient milk industry”

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