- [Narrator] Bessie, Olive, Sally, and Jess
have one big thing in common.
(cow mooing)
They all love jazz.
(lively jazz music) (cow mooing)
This is Live Oak, Florida,
a small town west of Jacksonville,
not the type of place you associate with jazz,
and yet, there's Ed.
- [Ed] I'm a dairy farmer here in north Florida,
home to about 6,800 cows.
- [Narrator] That Ed, he can really blow.
He's been playing trombone since elementary school,
but his audience has changed.
This is his story.
- The first time I can remember the cows coming up
is I was just standing out in the backyard
and playing a trombone, and all the cows
came up to the fence.
I had a full audience.
(Ed laughs)
They're not particularly critical either.
Cows are very much creatures of habit.
The music is something that's out of the norm
and that's why they're entertained.
The cows have an ability to understand
what's threatening and what's pleasing,
and music is definitely pleasing to 'em.
I have no idea if it's the one heifer heard the music
and the rest of 'em are following the other heifer,
but it really doesn't matter.
At the end of the day, we're all having a good time.
(trombone music) (cow mooing)
My dad told me when we were kids, he said,
"It's important from day one how we take care of animals."
And we like to consider ourselves good stewards
of the land and good stewards of the animals,
and playing the trombone is not any different
than going out and how we feed our cows,
and we take care of our cows, it's all about our interaction
with these animals.
Our animals, they care, and so you play music to 'em,
they'll remember that.
(chiming note)