Animal Whisperer Rosi

Today, in the farm stories, I’d like to write about my “little” sister Rosi Schuster from Biohof Maurachgut. She has many special abilities; one of them is her personal way with animals. With a deep calm, she goes for a walk with a calf, sheep and goat all at once—without a lead—and gives the animals the trust that they will stay with her and obey her.

If you go to the auction in Maishofen, you often see her in the ring with a cow, too. Even as a child she played with her favourites, the Noriker horses, and quite often walked down to the stallion at Stubnerbauer. If I went with her, the Noriker mare Tina would often push me to the edge of the road—Rosi would grab the horse with such joy and confidence and laugh. For me, she is a great role model. So delicate, and yet so strong.

But it’s not only with horses that she has a special connection. If the goat is stubborn, she sees it and walks with her children and the goat to the billy goat—either to the neighbouring farm Brandnerbauer or down to Wieden to the “Kaiser”—and the goat is covered. Then she walks back home again with the goat and the children, and that’s the “Gschicht” done. She doesn’t need a billy to test it out; she knows it, and laughs when I bring it up.

If lambs are born and are rejected by the mother, or the sheep doesn’t have enough milk for all of them, she has a good touch for raising the little ones on the bottle.

In the past, when Tina, our Noriker mare, still had foals, Rosi and her husband Werner slept in the goat pen next door so they wouldn’t miss the birth and could be there with their Tina.

For me, my sister Rosi is a true animal whisperer!

Until the next farm story. Yours, farmer Katharina from Zittrauerhof