Did a Woman Really Hire an Orchestra to Play for Her Cows in 1910?

Apparently, the cows had musical opinions.

In August 1910, newspapers reported that a dairy farmer in Lake Bluff, Illinois, had invited nine musicians to play for 61 Jersey and Holstein cows while they were being milked.

This wasn’t entertainment for a farm picnic.

The orchestra was there for the cows.

And according to the newspaper account, things went wonderfully—as long as nobody played ragtime.

An Orchestra Comes to the Dairy

The woman behind the experiment was Grace Garrett Durand, usually identified in newspapers of the day as Mrs. Scott Durand. She operated Crab Tree Farm near Lake Bluff and was considerably more serious about dairy farming than the newspaper’s description of her as a “society woman” might suggest.

Durand promoted clean milk and children’s health and became well known for her work in dairying. In other words, she wasn’t simply a bored wealthy woman who woke up one morning and thought:

You know what this barn needs? A nine-piece orchestra.

Although, admittedly, that is more or less where the story goes next. Durand wanted to test the idea that soothing music might affect cows during milking. So musicians were brought to the farm.

While the farmhands milked the herd, the orchestra played selections including “The Blue Danube.”

According to the newspaper, the cows relaxed and gave more milk than usual. Some versions of the story would later give the resulting product the wonderfully strange name “music-impregnated milk.”

Because apparently plain old milk had become terribly unimaginative by 1910.

And Then Someone Played Ragtime

So far, everything was going beautifully.

Calm cows.

Classical music.

Milk flowing.

Then the orchestra changed the program.

They started playing ragtime.

The cows reportedly became restless.

Durand was horrified.

She ordered the musicians to stop and declared that “my cows are cultured and abhor ragtime music as much as I do swearing.”

There is quite a bit to unpack there.

First, the cows were cultured.

Second, they apparently had strong opinions about modern popular music.

And third, somewhere on that farm were nine professional musicians who had just been told that their audience of dairy cattle considered their musical selection beneath them.

The offending tune was “The Cubanola Glide,” a popular ragtime song of the period. And yes—you can click the title and judge the cows’ musical taste for yourself.

The orchestra switched back to more respectable fare, including a selection from Tosca.

The cows settled down again. Naturally.

But Was the Milk Actually Better?

Durand thought so.

The newspaper reported that milk produced while the orchestra played soothing music tasted better and supposedly produced a happier effect on the people who drank it.

The experiment was considered successful enough that Durand was said to be thinking about putting phonographs in the barn so the musical treatment could continue. Which may be my favorite part of this entire story.

Hiring nine musicians every time the cows needed milking was apparently a bit much.

But installing the 1910 equivalent of a barnwide sound system? Perfectly reasonable.

The Newspaper Story Wasn’t a One-Off

The story traveled. The copy we found appeared in the St. Anne Record on August 12, 1910, under the headline “MUSIC CHARMS COW.” Other newspapers carried versions of the same story, sometimes under different headlines—including the wonderfully odd “Music-Impregnated Milk.”

That widespread circulation is probably why a bizarre little experiment at one Illinois dairy survived at all.

And unlike some old newspaper oddities where the headline promises madness and the article delivers three vague sentences, this one gives us everything.

The cows.

The orchestra.

The milk.

The ragtime rebellion.

And a woman who apparently believed that if her herd had to listen to music while working, they were at least going to have standards.

More than a century later, I can’t tell you whether those cows really preferred Strauss to ragtime. But I can tell you this: For one day in 1910, 61 cows in Lake Bluff had a nine-piece orchestra playing for them while they were milked.

And when the band changed the music, the reviews were terrible.