Hand Moeller, the head of De Oeko Melkburen, a dairy that produces organic milk and yoghurts, says “every calf needs its mother,” so he allowed his cows the maternity leave.
Calves and cows have an intimate relationship, he said, and as farmed animals they had stopped experiencing that.
But Moeller’s concept is drastically different from the way most calves are reared in Germany, whose 4.3 million dairy cows make it the biggest milk producer in the European Union. The German news agency points out that, while farmers feed most calves with buckets, Moeller’s calves are allowed to remain with their mothers and drink whenever and how long they like. Their mothers are milked regularly but the farmer only takes the leftovers.
