Yakut horse

By 2012 Yakutia will be the native land of all Russian horses

By 2012 livestock of horses in Yakutia is going to be 80% of entire horses population in Russia - stated Roman Dmitriev, the head of Minselkhoz (the Ministry of Agriculture), on Monday at the conference with the President of the republic Vyacheslav Shtyrov. According to him, since 2006, herd horse breeding, as the leading traditional branch of stock raising in the republic, is included in priority national project “Development of APK” and as a separate subsection - into the state development program of agriculture of Russian Federation during the years 2008-2012.

In 2007 the Federal Budget assigned 14.7 million rubles for the development of the branch. Sakha Republic - 80 million rubles. In 2008 the amount increased up to 31 and 142 million rubles respectively.

The goal for Minselkhoz of the republic in the indicated period is to restore livestock of horses, to set up horsebreeding cooperatives on the base of private farms, to establish the technical infrastructure for deep processing and sale of the production of horse breeding, to improve reproduction and selective- tribal work, to implement new technologies in the production. Furthermore, we will have to deal with human-resources problem, to find the ways to pay the horse breeders' wages, to adopt a processing of mare milk for koumiss and other dairy products production, biologically active additives and their bringing to commodity production.

As a result of all measures, as noted the head of the Minselkhoz, by 2012 livestock of horses will be 149 thousand heads (at the end of 2007 it was 134 thousand). The number of livestock of tribal horses will be brought to 15 thousand heads. The sales of meat will be more than 6 thousand tons. The employment in the herd horse breeding will reach three thousand people.

The President of the republic Vyacheslav Shtyrov pointed to the need of developing the mechanism of the retention of output livestock of horses, to a proposal on the additional support of horse breeders by subsidizing of uterine livestock and commodity livestock and the production of horse breeding. Furthermore, the head of the republic charged to the budget of the following year to develop the mechanism of the pension for horse breeders.

Source: Yakutsk, April 15, 2008 (Andrey Verkhoturov, corr. ANN).