e-ReferenceDesk's College and 50 State Learning Resource Guide

Find Online Colleges

Find Campus Colleges

State Symbols

The official state symbols represent the cultural heritage and natural treasures of each state or the entire United States

Pennsylvania Symbols

Pennsylvania State Beverage

Milk

Adopted on April 29, 1982.

Milk was adopted as Pennsylvania's State

Beverage on April 29, 1982.

This designation is a fitting tribute to one of the Commonwealth's leading farm products. It also salutes the state's gentle dairy cows who each produce a generous 22 quarts of milk a day.

Pennsylvania ranks fourth in the US in milk production, butter production, Italian cheese production, and ice cream production. Pennsylvania Dairy cows produce more than 10 billion pounds of milk every year. There are 639,000 milk cows on 10,200 dairy farms.

Where milk comes from and how it's made.

Ever wonder where delicious milk comes from? It all starts with healthy, well-fed cows that live on farms all around America the beautiful.

State Symbol: Milk

All cows are females (males are called bulls).
A cow can't give milk until she's given birth to a calf.
Cows provide 90% of the world's milk supply.
A cow's udder can hold 25-50 pounds of milk at a time -- no wonder she's so eager to be milked -- and a cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.

Can You Say, "I'm Full?"
Cows are BIG eaters. Did you know that cows have four stomachs and eat 90 pounds of food a day? That's probably more than you weigh! A cow that chows on only grass can make 50 glasses of milk a day. But one that eats grass, corn and hay can make 100 glasses of milk a day!

See Moo Milk

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF PENNSYLVANIA
HOUSE BILL
No. 1351 Session of 1981

      INTRODUCED BY GRIECO, CIMINI, WENGER, MADIGAN, W. W. FOSTER,
         COLE, STUBAN, SHOWERS, CAPPABIANCA, D. R. WRIGHT,
         F. E. TAYLOR, SPENCER, HASAY, SWIFT AND LEVI, APRIL 29, 1981

      REFERRED TO COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS,
         APRIL 29, 1981

                                   AN ACT

   1 Selecting, designating and adopting milk as the official
   2   beverage of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

   3   The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
   4 hereby enacts as follows:
   5   Section 1. Milk is hereby selected, designated and adopted
   6 as the official beverage of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
   7   Section 2. This act shall take effect immediately.

State Symbols

State symbols represent things that are special to a particular state.

symbol \ˈsim-bəl\
noun

Etymology:
in sense 1, from Late Latin symbolum, from Late Greek symbolon, from Greek, token, sign; in other senses from Latin symbolum token, sign, symbol, from Greek symbolon, literally, token of identity verified by comparing its other half, from symballein to throw together, compare, from syn- + ballein to throw — more at devil
Date: 15th century

1: Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible.