The Associated Press picked up on a story out of Columbia, Missouri this past weekend about a Nebraska dairy farmer who found that spraying milk on his pastures improves the grass – and the cows love it.

The original story from the Columbia Daily Tribune came out of a small conference that was held in Linn, Mo., on growing thicker, more nutritious grass with milk. David Wetzel of Nebraska shared how he started a second career as a dairy farmer in 2002, making specialty butters and cheeses. Not having a use for skim milk leftover from processing the butter and cheese, he started dumping it on part of his pasture. Within a short time, the cows began to prefer the grass in that area, which was thicker and denser than in other parts of the pasture. Wetzel eventually set up test plots and found that those treated with milk grew about 1,100 more pounds of grass per acre than untreated plots, a 26 percent increase in yield.

More research is being done, but you can read more about feeding grass with milk here.