Müller's Limo

The cows that is. A herd of Limousin beef cattle. Can't think what it is called in English. Here it's "Mutterkuh" - Mother Cow or I suppose something like "calf at heel" or "calf at teat" whereby the calf is forced to make use of the mothers 24/7 milk tank.

The Limousin breed is renowned for producing lean tender meat. I find the following paragraph in Wikipedia somewhat troubling:

"A major multi-breed study reported that Limousins converted feed into saleable meat more efficiently and significantly faster than popular British breeds, and marginally faster than other popular continental European cattle breeds. Conversely, the other cattle breeds produced proportionally more low-cost by-product and waste, which resulted in their live weight growth being faster than Limousins."

In the background a farmer from a nearby village who is on his second day of driving past our house in almost 30 minute intervals with a huge tank of slurry. A 10 km round trip. I can't be 100% sure how his milk cows are kept, but the normal intensive form often means the calves are removed at birth and fed up on powdered milk and then if they go in to milk production, are fed silage, walk on concrete (unless chained up) until the day they go to the slaughterhouse.

It's a dilemma that is not easy to solve. "You pays your money and takes your choice".  I for one have no problem with EU funds being given to farmers who go for the "organic" route. It seems only sensible that cows are allowed to keep their horns, fed with natural feed and not pumped full of medication. More and more reports show that it is possible to keep herds of organic milk cows with the same profit as "Agro-Industry" herds - less yield but less costs.

This form of beef production is sadly still quite rare in Germany although worldwide the most common. In Germany the entire farming structure and the weather conditions doesn't make it easy.

The Family Müller who own the herd, also have a "zoo" of various non-farm animals as mentioned when they invited my grandchildren to visit their tortoises a few weeks ago.