WELLINGTON, Ohio – If you want great milk, you need happy and healthy cows.

At Conrad’s Dairy Farm southwest of Cleveland, that means pampering their milk producers with waterbeds.

After 10 months of use, dairymen Richard and David Conrad gave the waterbeds a thumbs-up during a visit this month to the farm on Indian Hollow Road in Penfield Township.

“You make them happy, they’ll make you happy,” Richard Conrad said.

During the visit, the curious cows crowded around visitors, gently nuzzling coats and clothing. Now and then, a cow would get up or down from the waterbeds, causing a telltale jiggle on a bed’s surface.

When the waterbeds were installed last March, the cows were a little skittish because they weren’t used to putting their hooves onto the thick rubber bladders that hold the water.

But the cows soon discovered that lying on the beds was pretty darn comfortable, the brothers said.

The brothers paid about $55,000 for Dual Chamber Cow Waterbeds for their 240 cows and $15,000 or so for the concrete bases in which the waterbeds rest.

On top of the waterbeds is a dusting of sawdust and lime for additional bedding comfort and cleanliness.

Richard Conrad thinks the waterbeds could pay for themselves in as little as three years because of an annual $6,000 savings in the cost of sawdust and a better price for their milk.

The farmers said the quality of the cows’ milk improved and the farm was able to lower its somatic cell count to about 100,000 cells per milliliter, compared with 150,000 to 200,000 cells per milliliter before the waterbeds were installed.

Somatic cells are white blood cells that increase in response to pathogenic bacteria. The lower the count, the better, and the more stable the milk products produced from the milk. The U.S. government requires a count of fewer than 750,000 cells per milliliter while the European standard is 400,000 cells per milliliter.

Using waterbeds for cows originated in Europe about 15 or 20 years ago and was brought to this country by Dean Throndsen of Wisconsin-based Advanced Comfort Technology Inc.

Throndsen and his wife, Audrey, patented the design of Dual Chamber Cow Waterbeds in 2003 and have sold about 500,000 of the devices in 18 countries including New Zealand, India and China.