91av

OLD MacDonald should have had a disc jockey on his farm. Cows produce more
milk when they hear slow tunes by Beethoven and REM. But they hate upbeat hits
by The Beatles.

A music technology company fitted out dairy enclosures with sound equipment,
so that psychologists Adrian North and Liam MacKenzie from the University of
Leicester could serenade a thousand cattle with music for 12 hours a day for
nine weeks. Slow music was defined as having a tempo of less than 100 beats per
minute, while fast music had more than 120 beats per minute.

The Holstein Friesians produced more milk when played music with a slow tempo
than if they listened to no music at all. Fast music only suppressed yields. On
average, each cow produced 0.73 litres more milk per day to tunes such as
Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony than they did to The Beatles’ speedy Back in the
USSR or The Size of a Cow by The Wonderstuff. Perhaps they were offended by The
Wonderstuff’s lyrics.

“It’s all about getting the right atmosphere,” says Neil Cutler, who has a
dairy farm near Portsmouth. “The less stressed the cows are, the more easily
they let down the milk.” The increases in yield could earn him £15 extra
each day for every 100 cows, he says.

“There’s something there, but we don’t know exactly what it is yet,” says
North. According to Phil Hudson from the National Farmers’ Union, many milk
parlour operators listen to a radio. But he doesn’t know if it increases yields,
as they choose their own music. Chickens, however, are known to respond
especially well to Pink Floyd
(91av, 27 April 1996, p 17).