engleski

Breeding and production of small ruminants in the Republic of Croatia

In the history of Croatian people, sheep breeding - and to a smaller extent also goat breeding - represented an important branch of the economy, aspecially in the hilly-mountainous and Mediterranean area of the Republic of Croatia. The reason for that is because Croatia has about 1 565 000 ha of pastures and meadows which were very poorly used in the previous socialist system, and that after Patriotic War (1994) only 436 000 ha, i.e. about one-third of the total acerage was used. Mostly, there are natural extensuve pastures with low yields of 1-5 tonnes of hay. The aggression toward Croatia 1991-1994, when about 42 percent of sheep and goat stock was devastated, also contributed to poor utilization of the grass land. Today, after the war in Croatia, there are 454 000 sheep and about 63 000 goats, being almost a half of the stock in comparison to the prewar period. In sheep production today there are about 3 100 private sheep breeders, where the common size of a herd is 40-60 sheep (58 percent), then 60-100 sheeps (32 percent) and 100-400 and more sheep (10 percent). More than 80 percent of the sheep stock consist of a domestic low-productive pramenka and its strains of combined type, giving about 60-80 litres of milk, 17-18 kg of live weight of the lambs at the age of three months and about 1.1 kg of wool pf poor qality. The rest are crossbreeds With Wurtemberg and, to a smaller extent, with some other breeds. Concerning goats, there are about 950 breeders, have herds of 50-70 heads, i.e. about 83 percent of breeders, and the rest have herds of 1-50 heads and more than 70 heads, i.e. about 30 percent. In the coastal and and insular region of the Adriatic Sea the native Balcanic goat with low milk production of 80-150 litres, fertility of 1.4 kids and low production of kids meat of up to 17 kg of live weight is kept. Furthermore, the smaller breedings of Alpine and partly Saanen goat producing twice as much as the native ones are also kept. The feeding of small ruminants is carried out mostly on the extensive pastures of low productivity. In the period of the last months of gestation and during lactation, additional feeding is carried out based on the self-produced feedstuffs and according to the instructions of an expert service. Excepting the machinery for hay storage, other machinery is used very rarely in milking the herds of 100 heads; it is carried out mostly by hand. In regard to the market it must be pointed out that the total production of sheep and goat cheese as well as lamb and kid's meat is used for the needs of a domestic market, since there is a great lack of these products due to the consequences of the war. The wool quality is qualitatively and quantitatively bad, so the market price is low and it scarcely covers the cost of sheep trimming. Both productions are carried out on private pastures and the same time breeders use large national acreages with negligible financial compensation. About 61 percent of the sheep breeders keep sheep and goats as a secondaty resource of income in their own family husbandries and, after the war, the number of breeders to whom this is the primary source of income has increased. Mostly, the annual seasonal system of lambing is used, so the insemination is in August and lambing in January or February of the following year. In goats the insemination is in October and kidding in April of the following year. In the last three years, the breeders of small ruminants have joined in private associations on the district territories, where their problems and interests are transferred to appropriate professional services of the Republic of Croatia to have their demands and requests met. In 1993 a national advisory service was organized at the Ministry of Agriculture, which has been distributed in all the districts with 190 highly qualified experts in total. It was established with the aim of providing advisory professional assistance and strenghtening the private family husbandries. At the same time, courses for breeders education were also organized, and very favourable farm loans (up to five years with low interest rates) were given. Furthermore, the slection service has been organized throughout of the Republic and it carries out the production and parent records of the heards of small ruminants. On the basis, for breeding the progeny of their own herd, about 150 DEM is granted irretrievably to the breeders of female lambs and kids for their own herd. All the above mentioned has from the very beginning, greatly increased the interest for breeding and production of small ruminants of more intensive breedings, where the greatest interest is for the production of lamb's meat (85 percent), sheep sheese (15 percent) and a smaller interest for kid's meat and milk.

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nije evidentirano