Animals Evolved

With advancing technology, now the cows can choose when it wants to be milked and the number of times it should be milked. While this sounds far-fetched, it is soon becoming a reality in Australia’s dairy farms.

Specially-built milking units featuring robotic arms sense a voluntary cow that is to be milked. This adavanced system would solve the problem of shortage of workers in the farm and increase the dairy’s productivity. The next time you grab a bottle of milk, be grateful to the cow who has ‘donated’ its milk, willingly.

Source: The Age

Wayne Vettleson of Wayra Diary Farm in northwestern Minnesota believed that cows that feel comfort will have higher dairy production.  He was spending $6000 to install the waterbeds in the new 80-stall barn.  Although many are concerned with the problem of using waterbeds in cold winter environments, it is said that cows can keep the water warm without the need to add any anti-freeze agents.  Report showed that cows on waterbeds had less swollen lesions than those on rubber mattresses or sand-beds.

One of the company that offers the waterbeds for cow is Advanced Comfort Technology, Inc.

Source: AGWEEK

It is not a joke.  Researcher at Newcastle University, England showed that cows with names produced more milk than those nameless cows.

Keith Poch and Nina Poch named his cows at Marathon County farm with names like Blinky, Cutie, Baby and Attitude.  He said the cows know their own name and reacted when their names were called.  This could increase the cooperation of the cows during milking.  The researcher showed that cows treated like human produce five percent more milk than those treated like normal cows.

I wonder if the researcher will obtain the same result if they name all the cows as “Moo”.

Source: WSAW

A cow at Jilin province, China is different from other cattle.  This cow owned by Wang Zhenmin had a Chinese character on its body.  The word has different meaning, which are “year, age or harvest”.  It looked like a calligrapher brushed the word on it.  The word was about 60 centimetres high and 45 centimetres wide.  Wang thought that this cow would bring him good lucks.

Source: 163 via Cina Pig