Summary:

The first thing to do when planning dairy cattle barns is to determine a suitable management location. Site selection is a very important decision, as it will be difficult and costly to compensate for the mistakes made after the establishment of the enterprise. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is used in the solution of complex problems, creates a hierarchical structure in the decision-making process in the form of purpose, criteria, sub-criteria and alternatives. AHP is defined as the method of choosing the best among many alternatives. In this study, 5 main criteria (topography, land use, marketing conditions, environmental factors and infrastructure adequacy) and 20 sub-criteria were determined in order to determine suitable areas for dairy cattle barns. In order to determine the weighted values of the criteria, a total of 30 surveys were conducted with academicians who are experts in their fields, agricultural engineers working in the livestock sector and officials working on animal production in institutions.According to the results of the survey, it has been revealed that the most important criterion among the main criteria is environmental factors. Considering the paired comparison results of the sub-criteria; it was concluded that among the topography criteria, the importance levels of the slope criteria are higher than the others. Besides, land use capability among the land use criteria; milk processing potential among marketing conditions criteria; distance to settlements among environmental factors criteria; among the criteria of environmental factors, distance to settlement areas and distance to drinking water basin protection areas; among the infrastructure adequacy criteria, proximity to electricity services are higher than the others.