Cows could wear VR headsets to help reduce anxiety during the winter, leading to a larger milk yield. (Image Credit: Monika Kubala/Unsplash)
Cows are living in the matrix for real. It’s sad, in a way. But it seems the cows are happy.
This may seem a bit surreal at first, but cows in Aksaray, Turkey, are wearing virtual reality glasses, providing them with the illusion of standing on a summer-like green pasture. The specially-modified headsets, developed by a Russian company in collaboration with veterinarians, prove beneficial because they make the cows less stressed, resulting in more produced milk.
The hardware is the same as a human’s VR set but with special designs so it can fit on a cow’s head. Once fitted, experts adjusted the software’s color palette to be adequate for the cows’ eyes since they can’t see red or green colors.
Izzet Koçak, a cattle breeder and rancher, claims that two cows wearing VR glasses produced three more liters of milk a day, increasing the overall yield from 22 liters to 27 liters. He also says that previous studies demonstrated that varying environmental conditions impact the cows’ overall health and milk production.
Koçak even takes it one step further: providing the cows with classical music while wearing the headsets as he walks them around the pasture. He’s currently conducting experiments on ten cows with these headsets. If the tests go well, Koçak plans on ordering more glasses from Russia for each cow at his farm. Overall, the glasses make the cows think they’re standing on a green pasture during the summer months.
In 2019, cows in Russia wore a VR headset to determine if it would make them produce more milk. (Image Credit: Russian Ministry of Agriculture)
These prove emotionally beneficial for the animals, resulting in larger and qualitative milk output. That’s because it reduces stress for them while they’re cooped up during the long winter months. These VR glasses were first used on a RusMoloko dairy farm in Moscow, Russia, where they covered both the cows’ eyes. In comparison, Koçak only presented an image in one eye during experiments.
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