Cows cooped up for winter fitted with virtual reality goggles — so they think they’re outside
COWS cooped up for the winter are being fitted with virtual reality goggles — so they think they are outside in a summer field.
And the bamboozled bovines appear to be happier and producing more milk.
Snaps of the experiment have been amusing film buffs on social media, where they have been compared to shots from sci-fi classic The Matrix.
The movie shows mankind living in a simulated reality while machines use their bodies as energy sources.
Keanu Reeves stars as Neo — given a choice between taking a red pill to reveal the truth, or a blue pill to forget the revelations.
One fan wrote: “You take the short grass, the story ends, you wake up in the pasture and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the long grass, you stay in wonderland and I show you how deep the human hole goes.” Another added: “With the sequels The Mootrix Reuddered and The Mootrix Ruminations.”
The headsets were developed with vets and first tested on a farm in Moscow. Cattle breeder Izzet Kocak has now put them on two cows in Aksaray, Turkey — and The Sun has herd results have been good.
Their output has gone from 22 litres of 27 litres a day.
Izzet, who previously played his 180 animals classical music, is so pleased he plans to buy ten more headsets.
He said: “They are watching a green pasture and it gives them an emotional boost. They are less stressed.”
Russia’s agriculture ministry said the system was developed on the principle that cows perceived shades of red better than shades of blue and green.
It added: “During the first test, experts recorded a decrease in anxiety.”
