Cows on Waterbeds?
With some of our stories, you’re asked to dig deep and scrape up some “dirt” on someone or something.
Then, there are the times, when you’re asked to get dirt-y.
Today, is one of those dirty days. The location: Green Bay, Wisconsin. The place: a dairy barn. The story: cows that sleep on waterbeds.
Now, before you city slickers laugh out loud, this is serious stuff for the dairy farmer.
A content cow produces more milk, Alan Tauscher tells me. “Happy, healthy cows are where we make our money,” stresses Tauscher, who runs this second generation dairy farm with two of his brothers. “A cow that is not at peak health is stressed and is not gonna produce as much milk as a cow that is a comfortable relaxed animal.”
About 6 years ago, Tauscher introduced water beds to the 250 cows which comprise his heard. He estimates that his cows have been producing about 500 extra gallons of milk annually since the installation of these beds.
The beds themselves first started showing up in the U-S in the late nineties…the technology borrowed and modified from dairy farmers in Europe. The mattress, with its thick rubber skin, is able to accommodate the weight of a cow, which in some cases, tops 15 hundred pounds.
Most bosses frown on idleness, but the Tauschers seem to get giddy when their herd is laying down. The reason: more blood circulates through the udder when a cow is at rest. And the greater the circulation….down there…the more milk a cow produces.
Two of the many reasons I flat out love my profession: we get to meet some of the kindest and most interesting people (like the Tauschers), and I’m always learning fascinating things.
Here’s something else I betcha you may not have known. The next time someone tells you they went cow tipping, don’t believe them. “They were up to something else,” Mark Tasucher, Alan’s brother tells me with a wide grin. Mark says cows are so heavy, and so stable, that there is no way one teenager, or even ten, could take down a cow. He says the only way to get a cow down is to pull her to the ground with a rope. Would love to hear you weigh in on that one! Gotta head back now to the manure piles.
Jeff Goldblatt has been a Chicago-based reporter for FNC since 1999. He reported from the front lines in the Middle East during the battle between Hezbollah and Israel, and his coverage on Hurricane Isabel garnered attention from major news sources … and Jay Leno. 
I would like to be put in touch with this Farmer in Green Bay Wisconsin to discuss the facts about the benefit of wayerbeds for cows? If he has no email and he is willing to talk about his experience my address is 56 Anglers Esplanade Runaway Bay Gold Coast Queensland 4216 Australia
I saw your video - and was very glad to read your blog.
That video, and this post, give a good look at the nuts and blots (water and rubber?) of this new dairy farming technology. Thanks! (I took the liberty of linking to this post, with a three-paragraph excerpt: “Waterbeds for Cows: Udder Bliss.”)
About cow-tipping: sorry, I’ve never tried to tip a cow, but I’ll ask around.
Since this story is from Green Bay, it’s worth asking whether the Mark Tauscher mentioned at the end of the article is the same Mark Taushcer that’s the starting right tackle for the Packers? He’s a farm boy, so this makes me wonder… would be a neat connection.
I lived in Menominee, Michigan, and frequently made the drive from the south up U.S. 41 to the north through Green Bay. Is this farm really in Green Bay or is it in the Oconto area? I have seen a barn similar to this…frame and canvas in the Oconto area. Also, it makes sense as there was a Fox news report on truckers stuck in Peshtigo, Wisconsin because of the Iowa floods and Peshtigo would be just to the north of the farm I am thinking of…innovation lives well in rural Wisconsin!
I guess cows are just like humans, they need to get adequate sleep or else they have cant produce quality milk we see in the supermarkets.