Waterbeds keep dairy cows content

Cows that lie comfortably for 12-14 hours a day produce more milk, experts say.

BAINBRIDGE, Ohio (AP) — Happy cows produce more milk. That’s why Bill Timmons put waterbeds in his barn.

Go ahead, get the chuckle out of the way. Timmons expects a few laughs over the creature comforts now extended to his herd. The Geauga County farmer installed 200 of the squishy mattresses in the bovine boudoir. Spent nearly $40,000 doing it, too.

Crazy? Far from it. The black-and-white Holsteins love the amenities — so much so, they’ve already started paying Timmons back.

Daily milk production jumped more than 20 percent after just two weeks of relaxed reclining in the new five-star accommodations, Timmons reports. Apparently, the cows adhere to a certain you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours philosophy.

“You take care of them,” Timmons said, “and they’ll take care of you.”

Timmons caught a rising wave in dairy decor. At this point, he’s one of the first Northeast Ohio farmers to invest in the bedding, which reached the United States nearly a decade ago after debuting in Europe.

An estimated 150,000 of the beds now slosh around the country, according to Dean Throndsen, owner of Advanced Comfort Technology, the lone North American producer of the beds.

Several thousand of those can be found in the eastern half of Ohio.

Each waterbed — slightly smaller than a full mattress, though without a headboard — holds 14 gallons of water within a tough rubber hide. The liquid cushions a lounging cow; in essence, the 1,500-pound animal blissfully floats atop inches of water.

That’s ideal, because a prone cow is a productive cow, said John Smith, a dairy and animal comfort specialist with the Ohio State University Extension. Lying down helps a cow better digest its food and increases blood flow around the udder, stimulating milk-making.

Smith said a cow should spend 12 to 14 hours a day on its side. He estimated that only one in 20 farmers provides comfortable enough stalls to entice a cow to flop down, chew its cud and rest the day away.

The trend’s toward pampering, though. “A lot of people are taking the idea to heart,” he said.

Timmons included.

Until a couple of weeks ago, the fifth-generation farmer lodged the cows in an old barn on the 85-acre farm. The animals slept on beds of sawdust, shredded newspapers or hay made up on a concrete floor. Timmons said the cows spent many hours on their feet.

“We did the best with what we had,” he said, “but it couldn’t have been too comfortable.”

He and his wife, Barb, decided they needed to either upgrade or leave farming. They sank $1 million into a new barn and milking parlor. Cow comfort rules in the new setup, right down to the waterbeds that stretch out in eight rows of 25.

On a recent morning, the cows — fresh off a milking — seemed utterly content in their surroundings. Aside from a few chomping on feed, every animal claimed a watery bed.

Research shows that the mattresses help keep the cows healthy, limiting hock swelling and knee and thigh scratches, said Temple Grandin, an animal-welfare expert and professor at Colorado State University. Grandin admitted being surprised by the results.

“When we first started doing our study, we thought it was a joke,” Grandin said of the waterbeds. “Then we saw the data. They work. If I built a dairy today, I’d put them in.”