OLD MacDonald should have had a disc jockey on his farm. Cows produce more
milk when they hear slow tunes by Beethoven and REM. But they hate upbeat hits
by The Beatles.
A music technology company fitted out dairy enclosures with sound equipment,
so that psychologists Adrian North and Liam MacKenzie from the University of
Leicester could serenade a thousand cattle with music for 12 hours a day for
nine weeks. Slow music was defined as having a tempo of less than 100 beats per
minute, while fast music had more than 120 beats per minute.
The Holstein Friesians produced…
