posted 16 years ago
Would Sepp Holster maybe be willing to take certain losses to get his animals back to a more natural way of living, that someone less interested in the animals natural abilities would not have sufficient motives to explore perhaps? Normally if you are enthusiastic about an idea you risk a bit for it. I teach my dogs to walk in the city without a lead there is always a slight risk that they will get run over when i teach them, but it means they aren't always tied to me, it means a happier more relaxed life for them.
I saw a documentary on bears about an American or Canadian who rescued baby bears and then returned them to the wild.
He took them round the woods and himself ate the plants he knew would be good for bears and let them smell his breath so that they new what he had eaten. I think he had seen mother bears do this. He taught them what to eat and what not to eat.
When i was a child they were always talking of instinct and the idea was that animals just know what to do. Since then there are lots of documentaries of mother animals with their young teaching them what to do for months or years. The ways of looking at animals has changed at least in some parts.
It sounds as if pigs in Austria were always outside, had not Sepp seen pigs wallowing all his life, that is the impression i got. Pigs were always shut up in my childhood in england and an English sow could not teach her children what to eat and what not to eat. YOu have to find out traditional mountain pig farming in austria to understand Sepp maybe.
I have a book on the English meadow . It seems that before the meadows were full of different plants, grasses and flowers. May be Sepp has pigs for whom the tradition of finding food in pastures that are varied has never been broken, maybe you have to buy a teacher pig from Sepp, or a sow who will teach her children and breed your herd from her, and in passing sepp will hav ea new source of income.
On the other hand, that men are as close as all hell and usually don't really teach much, even while they pretend to be teachers, is something i found out when I went to art school and had male teachers for the first time in my life and could not believe and had to learn again the hard way and again, i got cheated a lot.
They really have a, learn for your self attitude, that was really difficult to handle for someone brought up as i was with women, who digest it for you and spoon feed you. It is also a darned, not to say a worse word, nuisance, learning is so much faster if you get the information and then can weigh it up. In theory the learn yourself method gives you more opportunity to be yourself, in fact it is confusing and is a method that seems to give others maximum ability to herd you without seeming to.
Knowledge is power, men are used to keeping there paws on the power, they don't give up knowledge easily and their distraction technic is to pretend that it is money that is power.
You don't get anywhere near money without know how, you get so miserably poor that others really have an enormous handle over you and if you complain they say you are looking for power and that it is bad to want power, they are as knowing as can be, as if you had wanted to be the boss when you only complained because your position was so incredibly low.
I like men but i have learnt to treat them with respect, instead of the calf like trust i used to have. rose macaskie.
) to my goats. I would be interested in learning more. I think the goal must be to do things as naturally as possible, but the needs of most domestic animals may not be able to be met in a completly natural way. domestic animals are entirely unnatural. they produce unnatural ammounts of milk and eggs, they are unnaturally 'meaty' they are unnaturally docile and they are unnaturally lacking in many instincts. they will eat poisonous plants even if they aren't starving (as some people suggest). they will not (even wild animals) self medicate (at least it has not been scientifically proven at best and wholly unproven at worst. if there is new evidence to the contrary I would seriously love to here it but so far, to my frustration, I have seen nothing but anecdotal evidence, hearsay and poorly designed 'studies'. I have been involved with animals my whole life and have seen first hand the effects of "natural care" gone awry and it is the animals that suffer. naturally animals would die of parasites and disease in the wild. naturally 50% of offspring (at best) would reach adulthood. naturally they would not produce extra milk or eggs and would not carry any more flesh than was absolutley neccessary. naturally they would not carry humans or walk on their roads or live in their barns or pull their loads or gaurd their livestock. we have exchanged some wild traits for human freindly ones and in doing so we have an obligation to fill those needs in in other ways. it is a compromise for both the animals and us. but it can and is mutally beneficial.
