It is Frühling (Spring) we are surrounded by various shades of fresh green and the apple- and cherry-trees are in blossom!
And the cows are back in the meadows.

In Spring, the cows in the meadow behind my house are those, that are considered useless, i.e. those that don't give milk yet because they haven't calved.
They will spend the next two months here and will then be presented to the bull.
If the farmer is lucky, the cows will, nine months later, give birth to a calf.
If not the bull will return.

The cows aren't allowed to keep their calves. The calves are raised in separate pens.
Instead the cows are now allowed to join their co-workers in the meadows. Calving behind them, they now produce milk which will be subventioned by the Swiss government. They have a purpose in life.
They are woken at six-in-the-morning so that the farmer-down-the-road can have milk in his coffee and they get milked a second time at six-in-the-evening.
The milk is taken down into the valley and turned into cheese.

The calves have a fifty-fifty chance of being turned into veal within a few short weeks.
Male calves are unwanted on a dairy farm.

This makes my f-d-t-r sound like a pretty heartless person, but actually he's a nice guy who is just doing the job he learned to do.
We often have a beer together.




Useless cow (for the moment). It will spend the next two months, day and night, rain or shine, grazing 'my' meadow.