ruth901
Good news from Poppenhausen: The missing cow Elly is back. However, her appearance is no less mysterious than her sudden disappearance two weeks ago.
Poppenhausen – This case from the Rhön caused a stir in the region and beyond: A mother cow disappeared from a pasture in the Rodholz district of Poppenhausen on the night of Sunday evening to Monday morning, April 26th to 27th. Because the fence remained completely undamaged, owner Thomas Sauer assumed it had been stolen. The police then launched a call for witnesses. Now the surprise: Elly the cow is back.
A cyclist discovered the animal on Sunday morning (May 10th) – almost two weeks after she disappeared without a trace. “The woman came up to me while I was walking the dog,” Thomas Sauer told our newspaper. At first the farmer was sure that it must be another cow that might have escaped. The missing Elly, he thought, had definitely been “sausaged long ago”.
Disappeared without a trace, suddenly returned: the mystery of the Rhön cow
But when Sauer approached the site, he immediately recognized his returnee. “When you don’t have that many cows, you recognize every animal,” he says. She was standing “a little confused, but uninjured and fit” in a wooded area – only about a kilometer from Sauer’s farm. She immediately ran after her “master”. Sauer took them back to the paddock in a wagon.
How she ended up in the forest raises as many questions as her disappearance from the pasture. Did the thief bring her back after getting cold feet from the media frenzy? “It’s possible, after all, her ear tag number was known after the theft,” says Sauer. With this number, each animal can be clearly identified and assigned to the respective breeding and agricultural operation. But he also doesn't rule out the possibility that a failed theft or an attack, for example by a wolf, caused the herd to panic so much that Elly – whatever – ran away. This would be supported by the fact that another cow has minor injuries in the neck area.
But how do you explain why the animal didn't return home earlier? “She knows her way around here. She would have run back to her herd,” Sauer is certain. Sauer had also extensively searched the area around his farm. “We searched everything. A friend even flew a drone all the way to Gersfeld,” he reports.
“There are several theories, but I will probably never know the truth,” says the farmer. He can live with that: “The main thing is that Elly is back and I can sleep better again.” However, she first has to reintegrate herself into the herd, which initially reacted somewhat disturbedly to the returnee. “That's normal. The hierarchy needs to be redetermined.” It is also still questionable whether she will accept her calf again. However, she is already old enough to get along without her mother. Speaking of mother: Elly will give birth to her next calf in the summer.
