[macgro7]

Wow! My motherland has shocked me again!
I live in the UK for 12 years now. Since I was 17yo.
I was born in a city and spent my childhood living on 11th floor - far cry from country life.
I always loved animals and only had opportunity to have my first hens etc during my university years in Leicester.

Anyway basically i only have experience of farming, including agricultural college in Melton, from the UK. I am used to seeing sheep and cows on snow covered mountain tops of Wales a d Scotland. But... on both highlands and lowlands of my native Poland, as I read, people KEEP SHEEP AND cows in the shed for 7 MONTHS A YEAR!!! British sheep see the shed for like 2 weeks a year (if that)!

I just read an article (in Polish) saying someone contacted police, local council and local animal health department because they saw cows and horses outside in snow - temperature was only around -2 (which is nothing to be honest, as it gets to -20 sometimes over there).
Even the professor of agriculture said there is nothing wrong with keeping cows outside all winter as long as they have enough food and water.
It's just soooo different than here in the UK!

[chrismahon]

They keep animals in barns a lot in this part of France Macgro7, but for very different reasons than Poland I think. In Winter with the rain, the sloping ground turns to slush and would get chewed up badly with a risk of animals falling. In Summer it is extremely hot, the ground is like concrete and the grass burns up, so nothing to graze on. Perhaps they are indoors 6 months of the year? Our neighbour doesn't have that much livestock, perhaps 20 cattle and 40 pigs, but the size of the barn the hay is in is half the size of the barn with the animals in and is filled to the roof.

[Scotsdumpy]

I think similar stories happen here in the uk - the first port of call is the rspca/sspca who then involve police if there is a genuine animal health issue that can't be resolved with their powers. Often, the calls to these agents are from misguided members of the public.

[CarolineJ]

At the other end of the temperature spectrum, my neighbour once got a visit from the SSPCA because a member of the public had reported her for putting rugs on her horses in high summer.  She had indeed got rugs on her horses - fly rugs, because all of them were severely bothered by insects!

[macgro7]

What annoys me the most is people nowadays can't talk to each other - they'd rather report their neighbour to police etc instead of asking simple questions. Stupidity

One plum reported me and my goat. Rspca came and said don't worry everything is perfectly fine.