In Slovenia history of grazing domestic animals exists in many forms of references as informing us how these animals were already used in the past and serving us. In the middle of the previous century due to the intensive development of economy, industry and also agriculture a huge depopulation effect happened on the countryside and a lot of people moved to the cities. Traditional forms of agriculture disappeared and many agricultural land, specially in less favoured areas were abandoned and overgrown with woody vegetation also due to intensive land utilization in the lowlands and new technologies in livestock stable rearing. Abandoned agricultural land is defined as a land which is marked in the local landscape planning community in a form of actual usage 1410 (agricultural land in overgrowing) and overgrowing with non herbaceus vegetation was not yet abolish. Overgrowing of agricultural land can be suppress by agricultural measures in a form of using machinery or grazing livestock. Nowadays only mechanical suppression of woody vegetation on agricultural land is subsidied by the government and not much the work and benefits of grazing animals are stress. The latter is crucial for sustainable and successful and environmentally friendly recultivation of abandoned land and which can also represent the source of good feed for animals. We can be successful in preventing the overgrowing with grazing animals in the way that we control the work the animals do. We must control their soil trampling, harvesting the herbage and manuring. For such work we use dry cows, suckling cows, goats, horses, donkeys and pigs. The most efficient grazing animals in preventing the overgrowing of agricultural land are low yielding categories of cattle and goats for meat.
|
