Remember the movie “Sun, Hay and Strawberries”? Everyone will remember the famous scene where they try to increase milk production while listening to music. This method may seem wild to us, but in fact some breeders around the world have actually tried it and have had success. In other words, many dairy farmers are hoping that by creating a better environment for their cows, they will be able to produce more milk and better tasting milk, which is nothing new. Apart from the aforementioned music, special massages for cows by trained chiropractors are also mentioned. But in Russia, they are going further and offering virtual reality to cows.
An interesting experiment was conducted by farmers near Moscow. They worked with developers and veterinarians to provide optimal virtual simulations specifically for cows.
Their goal is reportedly to enable milking of more nutritious milk. And how are they actually trying to accomplish this using virtual reality? They want to make the cows in their barns happier and feel like they are in a more natural environment. For them, virtual reality is a simulation of a meadow in the summer sun.
While this may seem trivial at first glance, assembling a headset that could be successfully applied was a bit more complicated. Cows have very different eye positions than humans. As a result, they can see a field of view of 300 degrees, but their binocular vision is limited to 25 to 30 degrees
. [The spectrum of colors that cows normally see is also different from that of humans. Cows can better distinguish shades of red, orange, and yellow.
Compared to humans, they are slightly less able to distinguish the other end of the spectrum, namely green, blue, and purple colors. Therefore, the developers had to take these aspects into account and create a unique grassland simulation specifically for cows.
According to the first results, they were clearly successful. Cows no longer felt anxious and, on the contrary, showed positive emotions. But so far it is not known if the cows\’ well-being also affects the nutritional value of their milk and milk yield.