Earth Eats: Real Food, Green Living

Teat Tweet Dairy Diary Lets You Follow The Lactose (On Twitter)

The Critical Media Lab at the University of Waterloo is using one farm's high-tech robotic milking system to give voice to our hooved friends.

Dairy cows

Photo: scpgt

Social media is not lost on Canadian dairy cows.

The Teat Tweet Dairy Diary now lets you follow the milking cycles of 12 dairy cows…on Twitter.

The Critical Media Lab at the University of Waterloo is using one farm’s high-tech robotic milking system to give voice to our hooved friends who put the cheese in our sandwiches.

Each cow has an RFID (radio frequency identification) tag and a Twitter account. They “tweet” about what they are eating, when they are milked, and one even seems to prefer quoting the Roman poet Virgil. Another has announced her candidacy for prime minister of Canada.

To better know a dairy cow, visit the Teat Tweet Dairy Diary.

Megan Meyer

Megan Meyer was in the company of foodies for most of her formative years. She spent all of her teens working at her town's natural food co-op in South Dakota, and later when she moved to Minneapolis, worked as a produce maven for the nation's longest running collectively-managed food co-op. In 2006, she had the distinct pleasure (and pain) of participating the vendanges, or grape harvest, in the Beaujolais terroire of France, where she developed her compulsion to snip off grape clusters wherever they may hang. In the spring of 2008, Megan interned on NPR's Science Desk in Washington, D.C., where she aided in the coverage of science, health and food policy stories. She joined Indiana Public Media in June, 2009.

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