After arson: Dresdner Schäfer coped well with winter thanks to donations
Last summer, Frank Ringling’s feed and equipment tents were set on fire in Dresden-Nickern. With the help of donations he managed to buy hay and new tents. And right now he is replacing the mother for a little lamb.
Shepherd Frank Ringling has meanwhile driven his flock to the Sobrigauer Apfelberg. Now he has to raise the bottle baby Seppl, which his mother didn’t accept.
© Sven Ellger
Dresden. The Tuesday before Easter was a busy day for shepherd Frank Ringling. With helpers, he drove his flock of sheep with 88 ewes and around 100 lambs as well as six goats from the winter quarters on the Nickerner Trutzsch a few kilometers beyond the Dresden city limits. Now the sheep eat the meadows on the Sobrigauer Apfelberg briefly. But directing and directing the herd of lambs, some of which were still very young, wasn’t that easy, says the shepherd.
However, he is glad that he was able to get the animals through the winter so well. On the night of July 28, unknown persons had set fire to his two farm tents, in which not only tools and a trailer were stored, but also bales of hay that are needed to feed his sheep in winter. Everything was burned.
After the Sächsische Zeitung reported about it, an unexpected wave of help developed. Ringling has received over 8,000 euros in donations. In addition to large donations, including from Kaufpark Nickern, numerous private individuals also transferred around 5,900 euros to him. A sum that almost left him speechless.
With the money he was able to replace almost all of his damage, bought two new tents and equipment. “The great willingness to help of the people was a positive factor in my continuing with the sheep,” says Ringling. Because you can’t earn a lot of money with the “landscapers”. Every year he struggles anew to make ends meet economically, he says.
The shepherd receives funding so that his sheep graze, clear and regularly keep open areas so that more species can be found there again. He also sells lambs in the fall. “There are now more people who are interested in near-natural forms of husbandry and landscape conservation, and they buy my lambs.”
Schäfer raises lamb “Seppl” with the bottle
However, Ringling did not make it through the relatively long winter without buying more hay and had to buy more in the spring. But the prices were okay. Hopefully it will be warmer now so that enough grass and more will grow back.
Ringling currently has a special task. He teases little Seppl with the bottle, at night the lamb sleeps in a box at the Ringling family’s house. The ram was born as a twin on March 30th, but the mother only accepted the sibling lamb, not him. “It happens every now and then,” says Ringling.
Seppl is not his first bottle baby. Therefore he knows that the animals have to spend as much time as possible in the herd in order to be accepted in it. Bucks then have to be castrated at five months to be able to continue living in the herd. “Otherwise they become angry because they are imprinted on people,” says the shepherd.
His lambs came quite early this year, the first in mid-February. “That wasn’t ideal given the wet and unsettled weather.” Ringling also had to cope with losses. If the lambs are too big, the birth takes too long, the lamb is no longer adequately cared for and dies. Sometimes the mother is so exhausted afterwards that she cannot cope.
In the coming months, the herd will continue to migrate to areas on Heiligenborn in Leubnitz-Neuostra and in Leuben, near the gravel pits. They also maintain the landscape there. However, Frank Ringling has not yet received any mail from the police. This means that the investigation into the fire is not yet complete. At the moment he has to cope with the theft of several fence parts with which he wanted to mark out a new area in Leuben. “They deliberately stole the posts and profiles. This destroyed the work of many volunteers.”