A rancher finds three newborn lynxes in his haystack in Toledo

A rancher from Menasalbas, municipality of Toledo, came across three small newborn lynxes this Saturday in one of the warehouses where he keeps bales of straw.

The tiny puppies were alone and sleeping peacefully.

“At first he thought they were cats, but they seemed different and he called 112,” explains Alfonso Sánchez, coordinator of the environmental agents of Castilla-La Mancha.

The farmer keeps the reserve straw in that warehouse, so he does not use it regularly, and the female found a refuge there in which to give birth in peace.

The environmental and Seprona agents of the Civil Guard who went to the farm verified that the babies were on the straw bed and installed photo-trapping cameras in which they observed how the mother fed them for a day and a half.

This Monday, the mother decided to move them to another place.

The female is a free-born specimen and she is not equipped with any tracking device to help locate her.

One of the puppies on the straw bed.

Civil Guard

Events like these are increasingly common, given the advancement of the species, but although these felines, which came out of the critical danger of extinction in 2015, choose inhabited places, they are always not very crowded.

In Castilla-La Mancha, lynxes already have three consolidated reintroduction zones: the Montes de Toledo, eastern Sierra Morena and western Sierra Morena.

Currently, another group is forming in the province of Albacete, where seven specimens already live, after the release of four new specimens in February.

In total, a population of close to 700 individuals has been reached, with 300 puppies and 400 subadults in the autonomous community.

One of the most emblematic cases of choosing a haystack for a lynx to breed has

as the protagonist .

This free-born female chose a disused but well-preserved warehouse on a large agricultural farm in the province of Ciudad Real.

The curious thing is that she came into the world in the same place;

Her mother, who came from a captive breeding program, found shelter there to raise her litters.

But the most common thing is that lynxes choose to take advantage of hollow trunks or holes in stones, experts say.

The mother of the puppies in the haystack. Castilla La Mancha

Last year, another lynx decided to use a box he found in a farmhouse in the Matachel valley (Badajoz) to give birth.

The owner of the facility located four tiny lynxes on a shelf at the back of a warehouse ―attached to his home― where he accumulated materials and junk in disarray.

He also thought at first that it could be a litter of cats.

The coordinator of the environmental agents of Castilla-La Mancha remembers that the best way to act in these cases is to notify the authorities and not approach the puppies or disturb them.

You can follow