Every year this city throws a huge boot-stompin’ party called the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. To get a better understanding of what it takes to put on one of Houston’s biggest annual events, we asked the rodeo folks for some stats. From truckloads of Twinkies to a veritable army of baby chicks, here’s what we found (mostly based on last year’s numbers):
Last year, there were 20 calves, 23 lambs and 54 piglets born at the Rodeo’s birthing center.
More than 475 chicks were hatched.
An estimated 10,000 people rode the mechanical bull. No word on how many of those people were sober.
A mountain of potatoes: 70,000 pounds of potatoes consumed by rodeo-goers (*not to scale).
Some 12,500 cubic yards of pine dust bedding were trucked in for the animals.
An estimated 22,000 people rode camels.
Rodeo patrons ate 250,000 funnel cakes (topped with a brain-wrinkling 1.5 million strawberries).
Vendors sold 120,000 turkey legs.
The rodeo trucks in one and a half semi-trailer loads of deep-fried Twinkies.
Cowboy hats purchased: 7,000
Pairs of cowboy boots purchased: 8,000
Some 500 truckloads of dirt get scattered across the rodeo grounds.
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2015.
