Cows Milk Quality Improved By Music

Do you want to improve your cows' milk quality? Play them Mozart
05/23/2007

In an orderly fashion 700 cows queue up for milking, with no fuss, no stress and very little mooing. The sharps and flats, bass and alto of Mozart's music have been found to be the perfect mix of tonality.


The Chirigota farm on the outskirts of Madrid is using an innovative system to produce the best quality milk possible from its milking cows.

The bovines are treated like VIP's at this Spanish farm with the help of accessories such as waterbeds, electronic brushes and sprinklers that have turned the complex into a five-star hotel for pampered cows.

However, the biggest influence on milk quality, according to the farm owners, is the use of music. It is not any old music though, but that of the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The placid harmonies of the Austrian composer's concerto for flute and harp in D major is played continually at milking time. The music soothes the nerves of the Friesians.

"It only happens with Mozart and although it was discovered by monks in Brittany, the idea is being used mainly in Israel. We in fact have specialists come over from Israel to explain to us new concepts of production. And it was them that told us to use Mozart," said Nicolas Sieber, the head of marketing for the milking farm and company.

In an orderly fashion the 700 cows on the farm queue up for milking, with no fuss, no stress and very little mooing. The sharps and flats, bass and alto of Mozart's music have been found to be the perfect mix of tonality: enough to get the cows to relax but not too soothing that they fall asleep.

"It is relaxing music for them but at the same time it is dynamic, it keeps the cows active. The trick is not to have music too relaxing, " added Nicolas Sieber. What the music does for cows is passed onto the milk both in the quality and quantity of the milk they are producing. Any other cow on a normal farm would normally produce 29 litres daily, these cows yield is between 30 to 35 litres per day.

The milk, which is marketed exclusively under the farm's own brand name of Priegola, also has higher levels of healthy fats and proteins.