05-14-2014, 09:04 PM
(well, there was a topic below about "jazz for cows"...)
I recently got back from a very nice tour of the Netherlands, and saw many things (including scantily clad ladies behind glass doors in Amsterdam), but the most mind-blowing thing to me was a visit to a dairy farm where the cows milk themselves.
Yes this _is_ safe for work...and apologies if this is old news to some, but here's a few descriptive tidbits from a Bloomberg report:
You read right - frikkin _laser beams_! And when the milking is done, the teatcups pop off and the cow goes on it's merry way.
Yeah, but you have to manually get the cow into and out of "the box", right? Actually, no. The cow gets "cookies" (the nice farmer lady told us) from the machine while it's being milked, and that's enough of a draw for each cow to come into the box on it's own! On the other hand, if one comes back for cookies too soon (the machine knows each cow by tracking its collar) then, well - no cookie for you, moo! Get outta here!
So this guy has a hundred cows, and they lie around and eat (and fart) all day, until they're feeling udderly full and then they walk over and into the box for milking and their cookies. The farmer says 95% of the cows learned the drill in _a week_. I think he plays video games all day now.
(BTW, the cows also have an automatic rotary back-scratcher they can use- I am not making this up! -but that's another story...)
I recently got back from a very nice tour of the Netherlands, and saw many things (including scantily clad ladies behind glass doors in Amsterdam), but the most mind-blowing thing to me was a visit to a dairy farm where the cows milk themselves.
Yes this _is_ safe for work...and apologies if this is old news to some, but here's a few descriptive tidbits from a Bloomberg report:
Bloomberg wrote:
Once a cow is in the box, a carbon-fiber and stainless-steel robotic arm moves under the cow, scans it with lasers to find the t eats, and attaches four teatcups in a matter of seconds. A video camera mounted above the cow measures the animal’s position in three dimensions....The machine also automatically brushes the t eats twice: first to stimulate milk flow and then, after milking, to clean them off.
You read right - frikkin _laser beams_! And when the milking is done, the teatcups pop off and the cow goes on it's merry way.
Yeah, but you have to manually get the cow into and out of "the box", right? Actually, no. The cow gets "cookies" (the nice farmer lady told us) from the machine while it's being milked, and that's enough of a draw for each cow to come into the box on it's own! On the other hand, if one comes back for cookies too soon (the machine knows each cow by tracking its collar) then, well - no cookie for you, moo! Get outta here!
So this guy has a hundred cows, and they lie around and eat (and fart) all day, until they're feeling udderly full and then they walk over and into the box for milking and their cookies. The farmer says 95% of the cows learned the drill in _a week_. I think he plays video games all day now.
(BTW, the cows also have an automatic rotary back-scratcher they can use- I am not making this up! -but that's another story...)
![[Image: 1Tr0bSl.jpeg]](https://i.imgur.com/1Tr0bSl.jpeg)