You're a hero.

FYI if this sort of study is your thing, Temple Grandin published her studies as a volume and they're quite good reading. More of them delve into human psychology than you'd think for someone who's famous for working with animals. Source: I paged through it while waiting in a book store

Wait wait wait, I'm calling bullshit. I see no udders, nor any horns. That's obviously two people wearing a striped cow costume for Halloween, duh.

I've not seen the study referenced, but if I were doing it I'd have cows I painted with white paint, white stripes, black paint, and a control I left unpainted.

I haven’t read the study, but most of these would need a placebo group, so divide the herd into thirds, one with no paint, one with stripes, and one fully painted white to get a baseline for each group. Also would be good to randomize which group each cow goes in each day so to rule out one cow who is especially tasty to flies.

What if it's just the white stripes (not the band)? Do white cows have the same number of flies? What if you paint them with black stripes?

Maybe those are answered in the article, but I'll never read it.

Yup. Large creatures knows better than to wear stripes.