Behold the Huge 500 Pound Butter Cow at the Illinois State Fair
It's been a tradition at the Illinois State Fair for almost 100 years. It's the butter cow and this year's creation is 500 pounds of unsalted butter goodness.
The State of Illinois documents the history of the butter cow that is the iconic representative for the Illinois State Fair. They say "500 pounds of unsalted butter are used to sculpt the life size figure by hand. The process takes about five days." That's a lot of butter sculpting. Here's the unveiling of this year's butter cow.
The butter cow creations vary from year to year. This was the butter cow for last year's state fair.
My personal favorite (and yes, it's completely not weird to have a favorite butter cow) was the 2019 version that was wearing a hard hat and swinging a hammer. Seriously. The explanation was that the butter cow was "rebuilding our state". Right.
There is a lot more to the Illinois State Fair than butter cows. You can check out the official Illinois State Fair website for entertainment that sometimes doesn't include cows.