The Yılman family, who started livestock farming in Parmakören neighborhood in 1994, did not achieve efficiency with traditional methods and applied to TKDK twice under the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance Rural Development (IPARD) Program, which is provided by the European Union (EU) to support candidate and potential candidate countries, to modernize their business.
As a result, the institution provided a total grant support of 180,000 euros for two projects with a total cost of 270,000 euros for Gürhan Yılman’s business in 2021 and 2023.
With this budget, Yılman and his father established a modern fattening facility on a 4,000 square meter area, 900 square meters of which is covered, with a capacity for 82 cattle. The animals raised in the fully operational facility are sent for slaughter at specific intervals.
Gürhan Yılman told the AA reporter that they are striving to advance the livestock farming business, a profession inherited from his father.
Yılman, who stated that they started looking for solutions after not getting good results from traditional methods, continued:
“In our research, we learned that improving the care conditions of the animals and establishing a modern facility were necessary to increase efficiency. However, our financial situation was not suitable for setting up this facility. When we learned that TKDK provides support to businesses like ours, we applied. We received the first grant support in 2021 and the second as equipment support last year with the projects we submitted to TKDK.”
“We achieved a 40% increase in live animal weight” Yılman explained that they established a modern facility that ensures the comfort of the animals with the grant support.
Emphasizing that machines replaced human labor, Yılman said:
“In our old facility, we needed more human labor and were extremely strained. In our new facility, machines took over most of the workload. Although the number of animals was the same in our previous facility, we couldn’t achieve weight gain with the animals we raised under old conditions. Since we provided a modern, clean, and comfortable environment in our new facility, we achieved a 40% increase in live animal weight. Previously, we could get an average yield of 900 grams per day from an animal, but here, with lower costs, the yield increased to 1,400 grams.”
Yılman added that they also raise animals for sacrifice in their facility.
Father Ahmet Yılman noted that they had been doing livestock farming using traditional methods for many years.
Explaining that they reduced the daily feed given to an animal from 13 kilograms to 7 kilograms despite the increase in yield with modernization, Yılman said, “Since we can take care of the animals in a short time due to the automatic system, we now have more time for ourselves and our family. This has increased the comfort of both the animals and us.”
source: aa.com.tr/ translated by Melisa Beğiç