When the barn becomes a delivery room!

Throughout the year there are births here at Zittrauerhof, but especially in spring there is a lot going on in our barns. Many small animals are still walking around pregnant, but soon it will begin!

Whether in the children’s barn, cow barn or horse barn, everywhere you see round bellies at the moment and now and then you can even see movement inside. But where are we expecting offspring now?

In the children’s barn, lambs and kids will hopefully see the light of day in the coming weeks! Our dear Jacob sheep Molly is now pregnant for the second year in a row. Let’s see if it will be such a sweet little lamb as last year! The beautiful white goat LADY and the doe Magret are also expecting their offspring in the next few weeks.

Now let’s go to the cow barn. Here Jutta just became a mama today and a heifer has her due date soon.

My husband Matthias helps almost 30 cows a year with birth. Here a little glimpse into the current calf nursery :-)

The first spring months we have quite a bit to do here on the farm, because the more animals there are, the more work there is. But it is always lovely to see the little ones grow up. But what actually happens to all the animals? We keep some of the animals ourselves, others are sold directly from the farm or auctioned. Because that too is part of everyday life on the farm!

But now let’s take a look into the horse barn! Because here too a birth took place in recent days. Our Noriker mare Perl, the oldest to be exact, brought her filly into the world in recent days. Three weeks early – but the birth itself was without problems, the foal was given initial care, the umbilical cord tied off, disinfected and the vet administered a vaccination against foal paralysis.

Foals drink smaller amounts of mare’s milk very frequently throughout the day and night. Our new foal was unfortunately 3 weeks early and did not find the teats on its own, so Matthias bottle-fed the little one for the first two days. After these initial difficulties it then found its way to the mother’s milk on its own.

We thought our foal was now over the worst, it drank well and was happy as could be, but after a few days it suddenly died and we were all very affected. My grandma often said, “a Rössl, a Blüa” (a foal, a blossom) and so it seems to have been with this special foal, that it was only briefly with us like a blossom.

Life on the farm has many beautiful sides and especially the births are a fascination of farm life, but there is always the risk that the offspring does not survive or complications occur. Nothing is taken for granted. That is very sad and a pity, but that too is part of our profession that you have to live with.

We’ll keep you posted. Your farmer Katharina from Zittrauerhof