© 2026 NPR Illinois
For your right to be curious.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Join the NPR Illinois team!

Community Voices is seeking a co-host/editor to join Jeff Williams and Randy Eccles in getting to know our neighbors and more. Apply by May 25, 5 p.m.

The news department is seeking part-time fill-in anchor/reporters who are available either weekdays from 5:30 to 9 a.m. and/or 3:30 to 6 p.m. Apply by June 5, 5 p.m.

No Heightened Security For Butter Cow

Bill Wheelhouse/Harvest Public Media

Organizers of the Illinois State Fair say they're not changing security procedures after vandals threw paint on a butter cow at the state fair in Iowa. 
Jeff Squibb is a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Agriculture. 
He tells The Pantagraph (http://bit.ly/1cB7iD1 ) that a refrigerated case holding the butter bovine is locked all the time in the fair's Dairy Building, while a webcam streams live images of the sculpture. 
The 500-pound cow is made with unsalted butter. Built from scratch each year, the butter cow has been an unofficial mascot of the fair since the 1920s. 
Animal welfare activists hid in a building at the Iowa State Fair and poured red paint all over the butter cow there. The damage was discovered Sunday morning and quickly repaired.

Related Stories