WE'VE seen it all noo. We all know about pampers for dogs and cats, but now researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands have installed a cow toilet.

Aiming to boost the 'green credentials at the world renowned Dairy Campus, at Leeuwarden, they have installed a Hanskamp CowToilet for the herd to pee in.

Ranked globally as one of the top agricultural teaching and research universities, Wageningen is located in the so called Dutch Food Valley. Its toilet facilities were developed by Hanskamp for use in out of parlour feeding stations and will be evaluated by researchers during continuous use in the university's dairy herd.

The CowToilet is an automatic urinal that cows use voluntarily as they come to feeding stations, collecting the urine before it hits the floor. By ensuring it stays separated from the manure there is considerably less ammonia emission – or so the argument goes!

The uni's team said it also offered economic advantages by saving on manure storage costs and separated urine can become a natural precision fertiliser, or eventually a source of clean power through hydrogen power.

Personally, it's a load of old ... ahem, poo ... to me!