MILK AND MUSIC

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 10, 11 December 1931, Page 3

MILK AND MUSIC

Cows are susceptible to the soft influence of music. Violins stimulate them to give more milk, but it is not the human touch that brings about the fulfilment of the dairyman’s desire. The miracle can be preformed by the aid of the gramophone. Trumpets, on the other hand, are not efficient lactagogues. Such are, in essence, the findings of Niebert and Koch, published in a reputable scientific journal (Monatsschrift fur Kinderheilkunde, vol. 33, p. 385). Niebert and Koch caused concerts to be given in a byre during milking time, and found that, whether or not music De the food of love, the yield of milk under its modifying influence was from six to ten percent more plentiful than that secreted without musical accompaniment. Scientific folk can be more fantastic even than the notoriously crazy tribe of artists in the pursuit of their respective ends. A drama in a barn played to a bucolic audience is nothing to a concert in a byre performed for the delectation of mild-eyed kine. We have heard of American farmers turning on the gramophone in the cow sheds, but we have not heard of any investigator verifying these German results by repeating the experiments which were published in 1926. They may really indicate some connection between musical stimulation and lactation in cattle, or they may only prove that there is no folly of which experimental scientists are not capable, and even outside Germany, no thesis is too absurd to be entertained by men of learning.—“ The Spectator.”

A third or a quarter of the dairy cows in the United States are inferior producers upon which no profits are realised, says Earl Weaver. The proportion is lower in the purebred herds and in the herds in dairy herd improvement associations. It is only about one-tenth. Some herds are mostly culls ; few have none. If every dairyman would sell —to the butcher, not to a neighbour or dealer —one out of every ten, he would contribute not only to his own welfare but to national prosperity.