This is so a-mooo-sing! First of all, a completely fascinating farm thing—Buttermine Farms in Ontario, CA turned their cows into robots by implanting RFIDs in them and setting up what’s called a Voluntary Milking System:

As a cow approaches the robotic milking pen, the computer reads the tag and determines whether or not the cow is scheduled to be milked, based on her stage of lactation and average daily output. If the cow is ready for milking, she is allowed into the pen. Once inside, a robotic arm washes her teats, latches on, and extracts the milk while the cow eats high-grade feed to make her happy. The milk output and feed input is recorded by the main computer and stored in a database, along with the total milking time, time/teat, and total time in pen. The farmer enters additional information into the database, such as a when a cow gives birth, becomes ill, or is sent for slaughter.

Some artistes decided they wanted in on the action, so they added a Twitter node to the network. Because everything tastes better with social media!

They picked out twelve cows, developed a persona for each one, and created a Twitter feed. Now we can all treat ourselves to updates like these, from Attention Please, Contrast Amanda, and Mortyfy, respectively:

10.3 kg of pure nourishment, with the help of Robot 101.”for thee Brim high the snowy milking-pail”

I just squirted 16.4 kgs of milk out of my teats in 6:58 seconds. What did you do today?

Got into the milking pen at Thu, May 20 ‘10 6:52 am and in 10:22 secs I pumped out a full 19.4 kg. Impressive!

I can’t wait to see what they twitter from the slaughterhouse.

—Snacktime