Oberallgäu - In the Oberallgäu, farmers have written a fire letter "for the preservation of the combination husbandry of our dairy cows".
It is an emotional debate about phasing out year-round tethering of dairy cows.
An online petition against being tethered was recently handed over to the Bavarian Agriculture Minister Michaela Kaniber (CSU).
In the Oberallgäu, farmers in the district council have joined forces in a non-factional working group and written a fire letter “for the preservation of the combination husbandry of our dairy cows”.
She is not against structural change, said district farmer Monika Mayer recently in the exclusion for business, tourism, agriculture, the environment and nature conservation, but against a structural break.
And this threatens with a ban on tethering.
Retail creates pressure
"Around 50 percent of our still small-scale family farms keep their cows tethered, mostly combined with grazing and summer grazing."
The retail trade would exert increasing pressure.
Tethered milk is no longer in demand.
"Today no more tying stalls are built and have not been subsidized for 30 years," says Monika Mayer, "this structural change is necessary, a structural break is not."
Many of the "combination holders" could not finance a playpen because of the high costs.
Often, however, building a playpen is also impossible due to the location in the middle of the village or in mountainous terrain.
These small farmers in particular shaped the Oberallgäu and its cultural landscape.
Not just one sector at risk
“It is they who cultivate difficult, often steep areas and who make an immense biodiversity possible in the first place”, continues Monika Mayer in her plea for maintaining combination farming, “it is they who drive their dairy cows up to the alpine pastures and so on ensure the preservation of the Sennalpen, they shape the face of our villages and the entire region and thus contribute to the tourist success of the region. "
District Administrator Indra Baier-Müller also referred to the larger context.
Using the example of the “Oberallgäuer Meadow Championship”, which was recently held for the first time and was launched to honor the achievements of agriculture and alpine farming for biodiversity, it can be seen that it is precisely these businesses that do not have large stables .
Therefore, not only one sector is at risk, but structures that generate prosperity, from nature conservation to tourism.
Animal welfare in focus
Ingrid Fischer (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) did not want to neglect the aspect of animal welfare and wanted to know what the situation was about.
"The cows come out of the pasture in the evening and automatically go to their place, that is not an objective argument, but I think they would not do that if it were bad for them there," said Monika Mayer.
It has been proven that animals from combined housing would be just as fit and healthy as from loose housing.
Grazing takes place on 120 to 180 days a year.
And Peter Nessler (ÖDP) added: "Free pens are often overcrowded, then there are more animals than sleeping and eating places."
When tethered, each cow has its own place.
Human-animal relationship
Animal welfare depends heavily on the family that takes care of their animals.
“The stables are often part of the farming families' direct feeding area.
The human-animal relationship is therefore very close, which is important for pasture husbandry and especially for summer grazing in our Alps ”, it says in the fire letter.
After the discussion, the district administrator was unanimously commissioned by the committee to support the fire letter to the Bavarian Ministry of Agriculture and the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment and also to pass it on to the other district administrators along the Alpine chain.
