That depends, you can have just one cow up to hundreds, more if you have the room and the means to care for them!
How many cows do farmers have?
The amount of cows a farmer keeps depends on the size of the farm, and can range anywhere between one cow and thousands of cows. Having said that, the average herd size on a US dairy farm is 115 cows, and on a UK dairy farm, the average is 143 cows.
Dairy farms play a huge role in our lives. They supply the world with milk for their coffees, breakfast cereals, baking, drinking etc. It is suggested that a dairy cow will produce an average of around 8 gallons of milk per day, which equates to approximately 130 glasses of milk.
So, if a US dairy farm has a herd of 115 cows, the farm is producing 920 gallons of milk per day on average, which equates to roughly 14,950 glasses of milk. Of course, some farms have many more cows than this. It's a good job we don't need to hand milk each of those cows!
Beef farms
Have you ever wondered how much meat one cow provides? Well, with a 1000lb cow, you'd expect to retain 430lbs of retail beef cuts. Of course, not all of that meat is the same cut. In fact, one cow would be expected to provide roughly 43lbs worth of sirloin steaks. Now that's a lot of steak!
