"There's finally something going on again during the holidays," said 22 schoolchildren aged four to nine from the municipality of Fraunberg, who experienced an exciting vacation day at the municipality's holiday program on the Wenhart family's farm in Grafing.
Fraunberg – On the farm of Fraunberg's freshly elected local farmer Angelika Wenhart, the curious children learned a lot about working with the animals on a farm in the large cow and calf barn, which became an adventure area.
The local farmer was supported by her farmer friends Susanne Gruber from Titkofen and Bärbl Hintermaier from Harham.
"Each calf has to be chipped and is thus registered in a database where all cows from Germany are stored," explained Wenhart.
And how much do cows eat?
Wenhart was surprised at how well the children knew.
In fact, they eat a wheelbarrow full of food every day and drink up to 100 liters of water, according to Wenhart.
She showed the students what corn, wheat, barley, rye, oat, soybean and sugar beet plants look like.
The children were even allowed to grind grain themselves with an old coffee grinder and feed the little calves with it.
They also learned that a cow only sleeps an hour a day.
This is due to the rumination rhythm.
There was great amazement at the milking robot.
“Our cows, which can move freely in the barn, wear a collar with a transponder so that they can be recognized by the robot.
Each cow can visit the milking robot up to four times a day.
On the fifth try, the robot would let them through,” Wenhart explained.
A cow gives around 25 to 30 liters of milk a day, "which we deliver to the Jäger dairy in Haag for processing," says Wenhart.
The little ones didn't miss out on their play instinct either: jumping from a bale of straw into a large haystack with farmer Hintermaier and shaping farm animals from homemade play dough were very popular with the children.
Afterwards, a healthy snack awaited with freshly baked bread, butter, cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes and all kinds of garden herbs.
The hit among the drinks was the homemade strawberry milk.
The students then fed the cows before they were picked up by their parents.
Before that, there was a big ice cream as a reward.
THOMAS OBERMEIER