By Ivan Jakopovi´c Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry & Water Management

The Simmental Breed is used in Croatia almost exclusively as a dual purpose breed. It is mostly located on small family farms where it is used for milk, and in some cases, for meat production. However, farmers are selling a sizable number of calves to the specialised fattening farms.

Cattle in Croatia are located on a large number of small farms. Some farms cannot provide suitable conditions for the use of developed genetic potential of these animals, most often older families with no heirs. On the other hand, lately there is an emergence of young farmers who have restructured their production.

Since 2004 Croatia has been implementing an Operational programme for the development of cattle production passed by Croatian government. It offers farmers favourable conditions for construction of new or adaptation of the existing farms with the capacity of 20-100 milk cows. Apart from favourable credit, an investor has the right to get back up to 25% of invested money, which is provided by the government.

Thanks to this programme, a significant number of farms have been built. Their size, technology level and other parameters established production system which can be competitive on the open market. Beef is partly produced on family farms primary producing milk, partly on specialised fattening units. Also, farmers who cannot ensure conditions for intense milk productions are lately establishing a system of suckler cows with the primary goal of producing system with animals kept on the pasture in order to ensure calves for fattening.

It must be emphasised that Croatia has limited geographical resources for cows-calf system. These resources are located only on part of the territory unsuitable for intense agricultural production. This production system is often characterised by the Simmental Breed either as pure bred of in system or crossing with beef breeds. Fattening system has been lately going through a technology reform, with the increase of final weight of fattened animals which ensured greater production of beef with the same number of calves. Since there is a lack of animals for fattening, it directly contributes to better profitability in the beef production.

POSSIBLE PRODUCTION SYSTEMS IN CORATIAN MEAT PRODUCTION

Implementation of the future beef production in Croatia should be based on several variants of production systems:

1. Intensive bull fattening at specialised fattening units. Units will buy fattening basis (calves) from mid-size and larger farms and fatten them until greater final mass.

2. Intensive fattening and half-intensive fattening of the bulls at combined enterprises. Part of larger and midsize farms, especially those basing their production on the Simmental breed, depending on available dry food and space, will fatten their own calves along with the milk production, with the possible additional capacity from smaller farmers out of suckling cows system.

3. Cow-calf meat production. Produced calves are intended for fattening. Calves are placed into conventional fattening until final weigh of approx. 600kg, mainly at the same farm.

4. Meat production in the suckling cow system. Produced calves will be mostly sold after with weighing approx. 80 kg to the specialised fattening enterprises.

5. Adapted fattening of calves for white meat. Specialised production units for adapted fattening of calves for white meat buy milk breed calves from milk farms and fatten them until optimal final mass.

CONCLUSIONS

In some south-eastern European countries Simmental is the most important dual-purpose breed proving the largest of amount of beef. In the past decades, due to decrease in the number of cows, there are a smaller number of calves available which has previously caused diminishing of the breed production.

Lack of quality fattening basis (calves) is compensated by fattening bulls to higher final mass, which means certain correction of the fattening technology (primarily food). In that context there is a need for new approach to fattening with large amounts of corn (in the form of silage and grain) and finding a solution for efficient feeding methods by decreasing competitive pressure on grains.

Production systems won’t be significantly changed in the near future, but there is a need for further development of cow-calf system in accordance with pasture resources. However, majority of production will be conventional. Breeding and selection work will continue to place emphasis on fattening traits, and the programme itself will be linked with breeding programmes from Central Europe. It is necessary to promote Simmental as a breed with long breeding tradition, adapted to the region and especially acceptable for smaller and mid-size production units.

We should promote quality advantages of beef meat produced upon the Simmental genotype and build a brand of special Simmental beef meat. Developed market and production safety are also very important for the safe development of Simmental Beef production.

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