Turkey’s geography is much more suitable for small ruminant animal husbandry than cattle farming. In small ruminant animal husbandry, enterprises are divided into two: fattening animal husbandry, i.e., meat animal husbandry, and dairy farming. The presence of cash flow in dairy enterprises ensures the sustainability of animal husbandry enterprises. Our local dairy breeds in our country have reached a certain level thanks to the efforts of our farmers and breeding projects with the help of unions, associations, and relevant ministries. Examples of these are Sakız, Kıvırcık, Tahirova, Sönmez breeds in the west; Devesi, Akkaraman, Kangal, and many other high-quality local breeds in the east. In recent years, high-quality foreign dairy sheep breeds such as Asaf, Lacaune, East Friesian imported from abroad are also raised in our country. Enterprises that have entirely or partially dairy breeds are in a more advantageous position compared to enterprises that only do fattening sheep farming.
In fattening sheep farming, lamb meat prices are not always at the desired/needed level, although it varies depending on the economic situation of the countries. Dairy sheep farming enterprises are not affected by economic bottlenecks because the consumption of local products such as sheep yogurt, cheese helva, sheep cheese, ice cream, sheep milk is always present in many parts of our country, even if meat prices are low. Dairy sheep farming greatly benefits the sustainability of the enterprise.
Although dairy farming is a more profitable and continuous cash flow providing model, enterprises must monitor the efficiency of the animals in their structure. When measuring animal efficiency, the parameter to be considered is not how many liters of milk are produced daily. Parameters such as daily feed cost, treatment cost, lactation period, and offspring yield of milked animals must be considered. In traditional animal husbandry methods, most of these parameters are ignored, or some are recorded in areas such as notebooks, excel to try to observe efficiency.
With the Ciftliksistem farm management software, you can track not only your animals but also feed, medicine, and maintenance costs per animal. Small ruminant herd tracking software ciftliksistem facilitates the complete tracking of animals in the enterprise. You can analyze the costs and efficiencies of your sheep, rams, and lambs by considering the reports provided by ciftliksistem. Thanks to the produced reports, you can breed the animals that cause you loss or lead to profitability.
One of the most important elements in dairy farming, as in fattening animal husbandry, is the amount of pasture that can be used. The abundance of pastures not only reduces feeding cost per animal but also ensures a healthier, happier herd compared to animals raised indoors.
In dairy farming enterprises, continuous cash flow to the enterprise can be provided with the homogeneous distribution of milk-producing animal numbers throughout the year. With ciftliksistem.com small ruminant herd tracking software, you can collectively track your animals’ ram service, birth times, and easily regulate the number of animals in lactation throughout the year. Thus, the care needs of equal numbers of animals giving birth at different times can be met more easily, and milking can be done all year round.
With the ciftliksistem.com herd tracking system, you can determine your animals with the highest milk yield, healthiest twins and triplets, and high healthy fertilization rate in matings throughout the year. You can also analyze the milking amount affected by different rations, different parameters at different times. Breeding your herd becomes even easier in the light of data.
The importance and returns of dairy sheep farming in Turkey.
