Cattle, cotton… and goats?! Texas doesn't just win the big famous farm animals — it crushes everyone in goats too. The secret is in the brush.
Goats are browsers: they happily eat shrubs, twigs and weeds that cattle and sheep mostly won't. Dry, brushy rangeland — like the Texas Hill Country — is a goat buffet.
Basis: Animal science basics: goats browse woody plants; cattle graze grass.
Texas has a long goat tradition: for about a century its Hill Country was the center of America's Angora goat herds, whose fleece becomes a shiny wool called mohair.
Basis: Texas agricultural history: the Edwards Plateau/Hill Country led U.S. mohair production.
Today most Texas goats are raised for meat — and the quiz counts that “meat & other” group. Dairy goats are counted separately, and their #1 state is Wisconsin, the cheese state!
Basis: USDA NASS counts meat/dairy/Angora goats as separate categories (see the quiz's source).
Why did goat meat demand grow? One common explanation is America's growing love of world cuisines where goat is a star — tacos de birria, curries, kebabs. Tasty idea, hard to measure exactly.
※ A hypothesis is an idea that isn't proven yet.
📊 Sources for the rankings mentioned in this note (links to the original data and retrieval dates) are on each quiz page below.