Economic assessment of potential efficiency gains in typical lamb production systems in the alpine region by using local resources

Publication date: Available online 13 February 2020Source: Small Ruminant ResearchAuthor(s): C. Gazzarin, N. El BenniAbstractThe alpine region is very suitable for sheep farming, which keeps the landscape open and produces meat by using local resources. However, the market has more potential than currently realised, but the profitability of lamb production needs to be improved. Management changes would allow efficiency gains and could be implemented on farms in the short or medium term. Thus, based on traditional high-quality forage management in the Swiss alpine region, we analysed the profitability of lamb production systems by full-cost accounting and by examining the economic impact of variables such as productivity, live weight and fattening management for two typical (standardised) farms: 1) farm with 200 sheep (Hill-200) in a hilly area with accelerated lambing and 2) farm with 140 sheep (Mount-140) in a mountainous area with seasonal lambing once per year. In both farm types, conventional breed types resulting from displacement crossing were kept on a constant forage area. The analyses were based on accountancy data and face-to-face interviews with farmers on 15 single farms in different regions.For Hill-200, next to other simulated management interventions the most promising was shortening the lambing interval to 240 days (3 lambings in 2 years), resulting in a substantial increase in gross margin (+44%), return on labour (+27%) and income per hectare (+57%) compared...
Source: Small Ruminant Research - Category: Zoology Source Type: research