Here is just the kind of strange-but-true story I love to read in my local paper in the morning over a cup of coffee…In Nyirangarama, Rwanda, a pig farmer has found that playing different types of music to his pigs has increased their growth and fertility…and their flavor.
Gerard Sina came up with the idea after hearing about a Belgian experiment, and decided to try it on his pigs. In addition to feeding them organically and sustainably with food scraps from his truck stop restaurant and fruit juice processing plant, he plays them music. For post-meal digestion, he plays relaxing music like Celine Dion or Bob Marley. To get them moving he plays American rap. And for procreation, he will play “strong music, so that the males can be strong and virile,” Sina says.
You can laugh (or you can dance), but according to Sina, he has a sample that has not listened to any music at all (poor piggies). And those pigs are half the size of the music-listeners, the quality of their meat is poor, and they have fewer offspring.
In Rwanda, a pig can mean the difference between life and death for a family. 50% of the children in Rwanda are chronically malnourished. And because of his success, Sina’s been able to give away 150 piglets a year to families in his area.
This kind of creative thinking is what we need in American agriculture today: Music, rather than antibiotics! It costs a lot less, doesn’t make our kids and elderly resistant to antibiotics or more prone to infection, and seems like it works just as well, if not better.
Sounds good to me!
What a great article. As a Music Therapist who has read a lot of journal articles pertaining to this subject and has experienced first hand the power of music, this guy is on the right track! Music is sound and impacts us spiritually, physically and emotionally. Sound waves come in all shapes and sizes and affect us positively or negatively! I have to say I am so pleased to see music improving the quality of life nutritionally.
I particularly favor the chamber music if Debussy and Ravel. It contains many passages of Pigsacato on the strings.
If it works for indoor plants, why not outdoor animals? I had great success playing music for my indoor plants years ago and they grew stronger and bigger than the ones I had in another room of the house.
It really does work. It’s interesting.
When I was about 4, my dad raised some pigs. I would sit in the barn and play my harmonica; told my dad they were dancing! Little did I know that I was helping the family budget!
Thank you so much for this aritlce, it saved me time!