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Cows Are Wearing Virtual Reality Headsets Showing ‘Summer Fields’ to Combat Their Winter Depression

©Max Pixel

Hey, whatever works, right? In Russia, cows are getting a new tool to help fight the winter blues that a lot of us deal with. A dairy farm in that country is outfitting its cows with virtual reality headsets to help the animals tone down their anxiety and to fight their winter depression. The moooooove (see what I did there?) is also intended to boost milk production from the farm animals.

The headsets display green fields and pastures to the cows in order to make them feel more relaxed. The project is taking place at RusMoloko farm, outside of Moscow.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Moscow Region said that the virtual reality headsets have achieved “a decrease in anxiety and an increase in the overall emotional mood of the herd.”

The plan is to monitor the cows wearing the headsets to see if their milk production increases throughout the winter. The ministry said that “technology improvements should impact the industry as a whole.”

In addition to the look of green fields and pastures, the developers of the virtual reality headsets gave the design a predominantly red color scheme because studies have shown that cows see red better than other colors of the spectrum.

Is this the wave of the future in farming? Will the results show that the impact of these VR headsets is positive among the cattle and this technology become commonplace for animals?

Time will tell…

But I think I might need to get my hands on one of these for myself this winter.