Radio Botswana barnyard sounds mystery

Many thanks to SWLing Post and SRAA contributor, Dan Greenall, who shares the following off-air shortwave radio recording and writes:

In all of the recordings of Radio Botswana’s famous barnyard interval signal I can find, the barnyard sounds are accompanied by the sound of cowbells. There is usually a rooster crowing and cows mooing too.

Today, while revisiting some raw tape from an old cassette dated 1973, I came across a short [off-air] recording of some similar barnyard sounds, chickens clucking and cows mooing. No sign of the cow bells here, but perhaps they started up farther into the interval signal?

If this recording is from Radio Botswana, perhaps they were only using the animal sounds in 1973? Maybe someone out there can help with this? Sorry but I have no other info. Many thanks!

Dan Greenall

London, Ontario Canada

Thanks for sharing this, Dan.

If you can shed some light on this recording and if Radio Botswana’s interval signal has changed over the years, please comment with details! Thank you!

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4 thoughts on “Radio Botswana barnyard sounds mystery

  1. Michael Agner

    Not much of a mystery here really. For years it was assumed that someone went out in a barnyard with a tape recorder, but it was then discovered that someone was actually imitating these sounds and recording them. I had a great laugh when I heard this, and the guy who was responsible for making these sounds was, to the best of my knowledge, never named.

    I can’t remember where I read this, but it stuck with me all these years as the silliest interval signal I ever heard.

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