The purpose of the programme is raising in the next five years, in sparsely populated mountainous regions, 300 herds worth more than HRK 350 million and positioning Croatia as a regional breeding centre for that type of beef cattle.
The programme was developed by domestic and foreign cattle farming experts headed by the Zagreb Faculty of Agronomy.
Salers Croatia is supported by French cattle farming centres that gather more than 5,000 cattle-breeders with more than 200,000 head of breeder animals, and by leading people from the European and world Salers associations, said Salers Croatia.
It said that it believed that Croatia could become the main exporter of ecologically bred Salers cattle in this part of Europe and that this was the reason it had obtained licences to sell breeder heifers and service bulls in Southeast Europe and the European part of Turkey, thus securing for domestic cattle breeders a big export market.
Salers Croatia will get the first 400 breeder heifers, worth around 3.5 million kuna, from French breeding centres next week. The cattle will be delivered to breeders in the central region of Lika.
Another 400 breeder heifers and 10 service bulls will arrive by the end of the year.
(EUR 1 = HRK 7.47)