As a piglet, Rosalie escaped to a fattening farm in front of a transport and thus escaped certain death. Now the sow not only keeps Maren Osterbuhr’s farm busy – she is also a little celebrity online.
Großefehn – wallowing in the mud, puffing trees or just lying on the lazy skin in the straw: none of this was actually intended in the life of the fattening pig Rosalie – until the piglet ran away and certain death jumped off the shovel.
For almost three years now, Rosalie has been living happily on the farm of farmer Maren Osterbuhr in the middle of East Frisia. “Rosalie should be allowed to grow old here – and healthy too,” says the young farmer while she is peeling a banana. “Rosalie, do you like a little banana?” Slowly the 400 kilo sow trots up to the farmer in the bright yellow anorak, grunts and accepts the fruit and is visibly satisfied with her stomach being scratched. If Rosalie had stayed in the mast, she would probably not have been half a year old.
Rosalie’s life changed on an icy winter night in February 2019. At minus eight degrees it was unusually cold for East Frisian winter conditions, and there was even snow. Early in the morning, Maren Osterbuhr went to her cowshed, which is around 800 meters from the farm near Großefehn in the Aurich district, to milk her cows. “And then there was a piglet sitting in our stable between the cows,” the 34-year-old recalls. The little animal was almost frozen to death and more dead than alive. But where did it come from?
“You don’t really get a pig,” says Osterbuhr. And yet: while walking during the day, the young farmer discovered traces that the piglet had apparently left in the snow on its way to the warm stable – through the freezing cold night. “Piglets can’t actually survive that,” says the farmer. Because normally piglets spend their first weeks of life under the heat lamp at a pleasant 20 to 25 degrees. But Rosalie made it.
“I wouldn’t have put them out anyway”
Osterbuhr found out the owner via the ear tag: a pig farmer from the neighborhood. The previous evening he had wanted to transport his piglets from one stall to the fattening station in another. “Rosalie just hissed off,” says Osterbuhr. The farmer Rosalie was not allowed to take it back for hygienic reasons. “I wouldn’t have put it out anyway,” admits the farmer’s wife with a laugh.
And so the “Findel piglet” was placed next to the kitchen heater with several hot water bottles and blankets. It took about half a day until Rosalie was halfway thawed again. “And then she was very hungry,” recalls Osterbuhr. The hunger did not subside that quickly either. The sow loves bananas, strawberries, tomatoes and lettuce. “We’re already trying to feed them lean”. But with a pig that was actually bred for fattening, it is not that easy. “Rosalie thinks everything that we humans find really tasty is also great.” Cookies, for example, that Maren Osterbuhr always has in abundance in her pocket – and Rosalie knows that, of course.
Meanwhile, the sow is not only a lovingly cared for family member of the Osterbuhrs, but also a little star on Instagram – a real ramp pig, so to speak. Because Maren Osterbuhr has been reporting to around 15,000 followers in the social network about her work as a farmer. “Then at some point Rosalie became a favorite.” Some of the followers even came from Berlin and spent their vacation on the North Sea coast – only to be able to visit Rosalie, she reports.
Incidentally, Rosalie is not the only East Frisian Instagram pig. Only last year, Count Bobby von Sonnenschein, an angler saddle pig, caused a stir in the media after the pig successfully defended itself against slaughter three times. The animal was allowed to live on – including its own Instagram account.
Maren Osterbuhr uses Instagram to get in touch with consumers. The population is extremely alienated from agriculture, she complains. “As farmers, we completely missed taking the consumer with us. In other words, consumers don’t even know what has to be done, how, and why. ”Many of them have absolutely no relation to the meat they eat. This would require a much greater appreciation for the work and the food that agriculture produces, so that pig farmers, for example, can live from their work.
In fact, many pig farmers in Germany currently lack economic prospects. In Lower Saxony alone, the number of pig farms has fallen from 5700 farms in May 2018 to 5000 farms in May 2020, according to the rural population. “What worries us a lot is that we don’t really see light at the end of the tunnel,” says Landvolk Vice President and pig farmer, Jörn Ehlers. Due to the corona pandemic and African swine fever (ASF), farmers have recently lost other sales markets.
Encouraged followers to adopt a different buying behavior
For a kilo of pork, conventional pig farmers would currently get around 1.20 euros – but at least 2 euros are necessary to break even, according to Ehlers. For the production of meat, eggs and milk, the farmers are dependent on their animals, on living beings. “With these products in particular, I find it particularly regrettable when that is not reflected in the price, in the added value and in the appreciation somewhere,” says Ehlers. Farmers have a right to keep their animals as well as possible. But more animal welfare is not available for free.
The pig Rosalie has already moved some of her Instagram followers to buy meat differently, reports Maren Osterbuhr. By reporting in detail about Rosalie, her dairy cows and farm life, many had a different view of agriculture. “I hope that one day the farmers will maybe get a little more money for their products and that we will all be able to keep the animals much better,” says the 34-year-old. Pig Rosalie is supposed to stand by her for a long time and is now growing old on the farm. dpa
