Our youngest is over there, it's only five days old.” Anja Frey slowly approaches the little calf, which is lying with its mother on a hill a little apart from the herd.

"They enjoy the view here." It is not a matter of course that cow Nalla and her young can lie so relaxed in the sun: Normally, calves are separated from their mothers immediately after birth.

Not only in conventional agriculture;

Even organic associations hardly made any specifications for rearing, says farmer Frey.

For more than 20 years, she and her husband Pius have been running the Völkleswaldhof in the Swabian-Franconian Forest Nature Park north-east of Stuttgart.

A biodynamic dairy farm with 50 animals on 82 hectares.

The Freys need 20 kilometers of fence to limit their pastures, where the cows graze in turns.

Depending on where you stand, the milk tastes of herbs or grass.

On the opposite slope, three cows lie alone in a spacious meadow: "They will soon have their young," explains Frey.

"They can rest there and prepare for the birth." Then the mother and calf join the others in the pasture.

This is called "cow-bound calf rearing". The calves are raised by several female animals, so-called wet nurses, or - as in the case of the Frey-Hof - by their biological mothers.

The cows must have a calf every year

Even in organic farming, cows and calves may be separated immediately after birth.

According to the German Farmers' Association, only one sixth of the approximately 3.9 million German dairy cows are kept as nurse or suckler cows.

Dairy and meat production are now separate - a result of the increasing specialization that was promoted in the post-war period when food was scarce and expensive.

So there are dairy farms where cows have a calf every year - because without a calf there is no milk.

But man wants to use the milk from the cows himself.

Therefore, the calves are separated from their mothers.

The dairy farmer himself usually has no use for them: the males don't give milk anyway.

And the females?

Only sometimes does one stay on the farm – when a dairy cow retires due to age or illness.

The majority of the calves go to specialized fattening and slaughterhouses.

They eventually end up as meat in the refrigerated section.

"That's just what the textbooks say," says Anja Frey.

“It was just done like that.” She used to give many of her calves to livestock dealers immediately after they were born.

In the absence of alternatives, animals from organic farms often end up in conventional fattening farms.

There they are reared in a short time in a confined space.

The Freys have kept their calves for five years

In Germany, there are calf fattening farms primarily in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.

According to the German Veal Control Association, whose 130 companies are responsible for 85 percent of German calf slaughter and which are committed to “high animal welfare and production standards”, around 280,000 animals are fattened there every year.

Almost half of all cattle in German stables belong to the Holstein Black and White breed.

They give a lot of milk, but they rarely put on meat.

“No butcher wants them,” says Frey.

She also has classic dairy breeds such as Black and Red Holstein on her farm.

In the future, however, she only wants to breed brown and Simmental cattle, these breeds are suitable for both milk and meat production.