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!
One very memorable day in 1987, Radio Botswana reached the Seattle USA area with amazing signal strength! My article and recording of the Botswana “barnyard animals” and following announcements is found on the SWLing Post here: https://swling.com/blog/2016/06/radio-botswana-1987-style/
I’m more surprised by the fact that an old cassette from 1973 still played – wow!
Mike N6HBJ
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.
I remember reading the same thing as Mike, that the cow sounds were made by a person.