Kens' Croatia Feedlot Article

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Just read my Nov/Dec 2001 Countryside again for the umptenth time and wanted to give Ken some applause. Great article!

I don't eat much beef...not because I don't like it...I do...but because I am appalled by American factory farming. The Croatians seem to have a great system. We should copy it.

A few questions for Ken:

Did you kick the salt habit?

Did you change your silage composition?

Did you change any feeding habits?

What else, if anything, did you change on your farm?

Also, what do the Croatians do with the manure lagoons? Do they dredge it out and dry it for fertilizer?

-- Jason in S. Tenn. (AJAMA5@netscape.net), November 22, 2001

Answers

Jason:

I got the feed composition on my second visit to where no one at the feedlot spoke English. The foreman tried to help me all he could through jestures and notes. I now think what I thought he said was minerals, was salt (or Salz there). I should have tasted a bit of what was spilled.

My cattle have free access to a trace mineral salt block. Normally don't use much of it during the winter.

I do not put up silage or haylage. All my cattle get basically is grass and hay. I do treat my heifers with an occasional topdressing of something over their ground up hay. Right now that is deer pellets bought at half price from the Co-op since weavels had gotten into the bags. Five heifers get maybe a gallon a day of these pellets when they happen to come up to the barn.

I really haven't changed any of my cattle farming processes as the result of the visit. I don't grow row crops and have a neighbor put up my winter hay.

I was told they empty the lagoons in the spring with it applied to the land on which they will grow the corn. I couldn't determine if they drain and dry or apply wet. I did see them side dressing corn shoots with fertilizer.

Was struck me most about the feedlot was how humanely it was operated and that their feed was very, very close to being organic. This verses a U.S. feedlot where the cattle may be kept in outdoor pens in knee deep manure. You keep them under those conditions you are going to have sick cattle - thus you pore the antibotics to them in their feed. Also, when conditions are right you can smell the feedlot miles away. The Croatian feedlot had no manure odor except at the mixing pit before it was pumped in the lagoons. I detected no manure odor from the lagoons, which may have been due to a crust having been built up on the surface.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), November 23, 2001.


Ken in terms of the croatian economy what is the cost of croation beef to the average worker, is it a big part of their diet or is it so expensive that beef is rarely consumed or consumed no more than once or twice a week?

-- Ed (smikula@bellsouth.net), November 23, 2001.

If I did the kunas per kilo to dollars per pound conversion correctly, the fresh beef I saw seem to be priced about the same as in the U.S. I got the impression they eat almost none of what we would consider prime cuts. Most of their beef would be in smoked products, such as sausages. Their average monthly wage is about $200 or so. I suspect most of the beef produced in Croatia goes to Northern Europe.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), November 23, 2001.

when i was in russia the "good" meat was missing. we used to joke about that....there was cured pork fat, bacony stuff, sausage, chicken, fish, but where were the steaks? the hams? the roasts? the pork chops? it was a mystery to us, but i was a vegetarian at the time and didn't really care either.

-- marcee (thathope@mwt.net), November 25, 2001.

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