Animal welfare is a particularly high priority on Swiss organic dairy farms. Alongside organic food and animal-friendly living conditions, manual animal care with special coat brushes plays an important role. A clean coat means a healthy cow. The massage from the brush also helps to increase the cows’ well-being.

Visitors to a Swiss shopping mall were able to massage dairy cows at the touch of a button using an oversized cattle brush on an organic farm 50 km away. In real time. The brush on the farm was activated when the button was pushed in the mall. Anyone pressing the button was rewarded with a free sample of organic milk from the cows by way of thanks. Make the cow happy. And in turn, the cow will make you happy.

With the mechanical cattle brush, which is modelled on car-wash brushes, we created a spa programme for organic cows. Further, programs were developed specifically for the project to establish a Websocket connection between the sites, meaning that a video signal and the command to start the cattle brush could be transmitted within milliseconds. A total of six film cameras captured the action.