Sign up for email newsletters

Sign up for email newsletters

Brad Biehl ordered memory foam mattresses to make sure his tenants sleep comfortably.

His tenants, however, don’t sleep in hotel rooms. Or bedrooms at all. And when they lie down for some shuteye, it’s after a long day of milk production.

Biehl’s tenants are the hundreds of dairy cows he manages and milks at Corner View Farm in Richmond Township.

The cows at Corner View are getting the royal treatment: brand-new beds boasting 1 1/2 inches of premium memory foam, crafted with the same materials that make human mattresses perfect for lounging.

As for the purpose of bovine beds, it’s about all-around cow comfort, Biehl said, since cows only produce milk when they’re relaxing.

“We want a cow to be laying down as many hours as possible because a cow doesn’t produce milk when she’s standing,” Biehl said. “When a cow is uncomfortable, she’s not going to want to lay down.”

While the idea of memory foam bedding for farm animals may seem unusual, cow mattresses have been an industry standard for decades, Biehl said.

“In (the dairy) industry about half of the cows do rest on mattresses, and the other half will rest on sand bedding or some other kind of deep bedded pack,” Biehl said. “We put our first mattresses in one of our barns when I was a kid 30 years ago.”

The mattresses Biehl has in now aren’t quite identical to those people sleep on. They’re optimized for cow health, meaning the memory foam is covered with washable rubber, as well as a layer of bacteria-resistant straw and gypsum bedding.

Like their human counterparts, cows get uncomfortable when their mattresses wear out.

“We actually gained almost five pounds of milk last time we changed them (mattresses) out,” Biehl noted.

He said that during the changeout, there was one day when the cows had to lie down without mattresses.

“The cows stood most of the night because they didn’t want to lay on concrete,” Biehl said.

When Biehl finally opened the gate to their sleeping area the next day, the cows were ecstatic.

“They ran in like little kids chasing ice cream, they all just dove into these beds and acted like they were exhausted,” Biehl said. “We felt a little bad about their one bad day, but it made us feel good to see how we were taking care of them.”

But it’s not just the mattresses that ensure cows at Corner View are living in the lap of luxury.

The farm offers no shortage of accommodations, Biehl said, like a fully automated, rotating grooming brush that runs 24 hours a day.

“Basically they can get a full body massage any time,” Biehl noted.

The rest of the barn is automated too, with curtains, lights and fans that turn on and off to maintain an ideal atmosphere for the cows.

Feed is always available as well, and anytime Corner View cows are ready to be milked, a robotic milking machine is there to handle the job.

“You want to talk about cows that are living the life, they’re here in Kutztown,” Biehl said.

Biehl’s recent round of mattress replacements was paid for in part by a $125,000 grant from the Center for Dairy Excellence that was split between 25 Pennsylvania dairy producers.

The grants, awarded in November, were designed to support dairy farm improvement projects that enhance efficiency and cow comfort.

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

Sign up for email newsletters