Cows who watched a performance of a Shakespeare play produced more milk, it has been reported.
In the past it was found that playing classical music to cows made them more relaxed and that they produced more milk, which was felt to be a result of this relaxed state. It now seems like allowing them to watch plays by William Shakespeare might have the same calming effect as it increased milk production by 4%.
The Changeling Theatre group are a quirky Kent based company and they decided to perform for a dairy herd of Freesian cows near Maidstone. They performed some scenes from ‘the Merry Wives of Windsor’ in a bizarre experiment to find out if the cows enjoyed it. They decided that using the fields would save them renting a hall for their rehearsals and when it had such a good effect on the cows and milk production, the farmer was more than happy to let them continue rehearsing there.
It was felt that the Shakespeare comedy was relaxing enough to help to cows to produce more milk in the same way that classical music had been found to be. The theatre group said that they would not have tried it, had the play been one of Shakespeare’s tragedies as they would be worried that it might have the reverse effect and they would not like to upset the animals. However, as it was having such a positive effect they were likely to continue with rehearsing near to the field in order to entertain the cows.
They do not know whether it is the language in the Shakespeare plays or quite what it is that relaxes the cows, but whatever it is, the farm workers were very happy about the increase in the milk yield, even though it was not by a massive amount.