In the space of an hour, Aurélie Mijailovic and Mickaël Le Gouestre from Gaec Villa Omnia, in Vue (Loire-Atlantique), lost all their animals.
Torrents of rain accompanied storm Céline on October 28.
Their approximately 120 animals, 80 sheep and 40 goats, were in a pasture in a wetland area of Pellerin.
They saw the water rising.
“Mickaël wanted to intervene, but he almost got swept away by the current,” remembers Aurélie Mijailovic.
The firefighters were called and reassured the couple: their animals were dry on a dike.
They must return after helping the neighbor's horses.
But when they return, there is no trace of the herd.
“A dike broke, the current was so violent that the animals became exhausted and drowned,” she says.
Only a goat, stuck in a tree, survived.
" It's horrible.
We were there, on the spot, and we couldn’t do anything,” she adds.
“Insurance companies don’t follow us”
Five years of work and patient genetic selection have gone with the water.
The livelihood of the couple, who sells lamb meat and was to start producing goat cheeses, too.
The breeders of Gaec Villa Omnia find themselves alone and without compensation.
“The insurance companies don’t follow us, there is an exclusion from the contract: the animals must not be outdoors,” sighs Aurélie Mijailovic.
The couple is in shock.
“At the beginning we closed ourselves off.
But we received a lot of support.
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Aurélie Mijailovic and Mickaël Le Gouestre then decided to launch a fundraiser to help them.
They have already collected almost 5,000 euros: “We have great colleagues, partner breeders who help us, but we have to buy back animals.
» They also want to alert other farmers about these “contracts which do not cover well”, especially free-range livestock: “We almost gave up, but we are bouncing back today and that’s great!”
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