Comparison of Profitability of Cross and Native Breed Cattle Fattening Farms in Turkey

To compare cross and native-breed fattening farms focusing on the profitability, data of 2006 production period were collected from 44 crossbreed and 14 native-breed fattening farms. The daily live weight gain per cross-breed cattle (909.4 g) was higher than that of native-breed cattle (558.2 g.). The profitability rate was +21.3% for cross-breed fattening farms maintaining >26 cattle. It was negative for cross breeding farms maintaining less cattle or the native breed farms due to low daily live weight gain, high production costs, feed intake inefficiency and low sales prices. The total production elasticity of input of cross-breed cattle fattening farms was 1.034, which means there existed an increasing return to scale.