During a drive to Augusta several weeks before Christmas, my wife and I listened to the presentation of the 2009 Ig Nobel Prizes on National Public Radio. I found it to be both entertaining and even a bit enlightening.

As their name indicates, the Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes. They are sponsored in part by the Annals of Improbable Research, a whimsical publication at Harvard University, and are presented with tongue implanted deeply in cheek to real researchers for “achievements that make people laugh and then make them think.”

The 2009 Ig Nobel Prize that I found most interesting was the one for veterinary medicine. It was presented to Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University in Great Britain for the study that found that cows with names give more milk than cows that are nameless.

“Of course cows with names give more milk,” I told my wife as I listened to the Ig Nobel Prize. “Contented cows give more milk. Why do you think Bordens had Elsie as its mascot for all those years?”

While I don’t pretend to be an expert on dairy cows like Rowlinson and Douglas, experience has taught me quite a bit about milking. Between the time I was 9 and when I left the farm for college at 18, I milked every morning and evening — all of it by hand.

I was good at it. When I was about 16, my cousin used a stopwatch to time how long it took me to milk one gallon of milk. For many weeks, I was unable to break the 1 minute 13 second barrier, and that became an obsession with me like breaking the four-minute mile must have been for Roger Bannister.

One evening I did it.

“One minute, 12.9 seconds!” my cousin announced.

I stood up in elation, lifting the bucket of fresh milk above my head. At which point, I dropped the bucket and watched my record-setting gallon spill onto the barn floor.

“Oh well, you can’t cry over spilt milk,” my cousin said.

“Not funny,” I replied — but it was.

Over the years, I milked a dozen or so different cows — and I had a name for each one of them. I can’t say they were pets, but you can’t spend hours upon hours perched beneath cows without getting to know them much better than most people would want to know them.

I often gave them names to fit their personality. There was Nervous Nellie who was never able to relax when being milked, and Big Mama, whose teats hung so low to the ground that I could barely get a bucket under them. And there was Blackie, who was my favorite of all my childhood cows.

I’m certain that the two English researchers are right about the importance of giving cows names, but such research is irrelevant today. When I was a kid, the dairy farmers might have milked 25 cows by using milking machines. Today, it is not unusual for mega-dairy farms to milk several hundred cows. Those cows have numbers instead of names, but if cow No. 1087A was called Betsy, I am confident she would give more milk.

But on today’s large dairy farm, a cow is treated as just another piece of equipment. I recently read that a milking machine has been developed that will allow the milking to be done without having a human ever touch the cow. How sad.

Every cow I ever milked was unique in her own way. Even if giving each cow a name will help her give more milk, I’m sure the mega-farmers think she is giving enough milk just as she is.

When my wife and I and then two children moved to Ashland in 1979, we were forced to leave Angela behind in Tennessee. Angela was my Jersey milk cow. She was part of our plan to raise enough produce and livestock on our six acres to become self-sufficient.

When I walked outside each morning, there was Angela waiting to walk with me down to the barn. Shortly after 4 each afternoon, Angela would walk to the far corner of her pasture to await my arrival home. As soon as she heard my car coming down the road, she’d start walking toward the house. She would wait by the gate while I went into the house to change into my farm clothes. When I came out, she began the slow walk to the barn.

I have not milked a cow since Angela almost 31 years ago, but I am confident I could still do it. It’s just too bad the research that won the Ig Nobel Prize will go down as useless information.

I can’t believe I have just written a column about milking cows. How udderly ridiculous.

JOHN CANNON can be reached at jcannon@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2649.