How many cattle are in the world? The global live cattle population amounted to about 1.57 billion heads in 2023, up from approximately 1.51 million in 2021. Cows as livestock The domestication of cattle began as early as 10,000 to 5,000 years ago. From ancient times up to the present, cattle are bred to provide meat and dairy. Cattle are also employed as draft animals to plow the fields or transport heavy objects. Cattle hide is used for the production of leather, and dung for fuel and agricultural fertilizer. In 2022, India was home to the highest number of milk cows in the world. Cattle farming in the United States Cattle meat such as beef and veal is one of the most widely consumed types of meat across the globe, and is particularly popular in the United States. The United States is the top producer of beef and veal of any country worldwide. In 2021, beef production in the United States reached 12.6 million metric tons. Beef production appears to be following a positive trend in the United States. More than 33.07 million cattle were slaughtered both commercially and in farms annually in the United States in 2019, up from 33 million in the previous year.

Ethiopia had the highest number of cattle in Africa as of 2022, roughly 68 million heads. This represented almost double the amount registered in Chad, which possessed the second-highest bovine animal stock on the continent. That same year, Africa had over 381 million heads of cattle, one of the major species raised for livestock farming on the continent.

India's cattle inventory amounted to about 308 million in 2023. In comparison, the global cattle population stood at over one billion, India had the highest cattle population followed by Brazil, China and the United States that year.

Where are cattle bred in India?

As one of the leading dairy producers and consumers worldwide, cattle in the south Asian country were bred mainly in the rural areas. However, its population was spread unevenly across the vast land. Uttar Pradesh ranked first in terms of milk production, followed by Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh in 2023.

Contextualizing the holiness of the Indian cow Considered a sacred animal by Hindus in India, the cow is associated with several gods and goddesses. This deep religious and cultural significance has led to communal tensions. In 2014, the government established the Rashtriya Gokul Mission (RGM) to conserve and develop indigenous breeds of cows and buffaloes. While the general goal was well-received, it aligns with the underlying Hindu nationalist narrative of the current government.

A spatially disaggregated global livestock dataset containing information on biomass use, production, feed efficiency, excretion, and greenhouse gas emissions for 28 world regions, 8 livestock production systems, 4 animal species (cattle, small ruminants, pigs, and poultry), and 3 livestock products (milk, meat, and eggs) for the year 2000. The dataset highlights: (i) feed efficiency as a key driver of productivity, resource use, and greenhouse gas emission intensities, with vast differences between production systems and animal products; (ii) the importance of grasslands as a global resource, supplying almost 50% of biomass for animals while continuing to be at the epicentre of land conversion processes; and (iii) the importance of mixed crop–livestock systems, producing the greater part of animal production (over 60%) in both the developed and the developing world. These data provide critical information for developing targeted, sustainable solutions for the livestock sector and its widely ranging contribution to the global food system.

Lineage: A livestock systems classification updated by Robinson et al (2011) was used as the starting point. It is based on agro-ecological differentiation (arid, humid and temperate/tropical highland areas), which helps in establishing the composition of diets for animals in different regions and agro-agroecologies and in the future to elicit the impacts that climate change might have on feed resources and land use. We differentiated 8 different types of livestock systems in 28 geographical regions of the world for this study. Numbers of animals for each of these systems and regions were estimated using the data of Wint and Robinson (2007) for the year 2000.

For ruminants (cattle, sheep and goats), we disaggregated the dairy and beef cattle herds using livestock demographic data for total cattle, sheep and goats and the dairy females for each species, respectively, from FAOSTAT. We used herd dynamics models parameterised for each region and production system using reproduction and mortality rates obtained from extensive literature reviews to estimate herd composition. For monogastrics (pigs and poultry), we only differentiated two systems: smallholder and industrial production systems. The allocation of poultry, eggs and pork production was done on the basis of knowledge of the total product output from these two systems from national information from selected countries in the different regions, applied to the respective region.

Biomass consumption and productivity estimations from different species in each region and system followed a three stage process. First, feed availability of four main types of feeds (grass, crop residues, grains, occasional feeds) was estimated using hybrid maps of grassland productivity and EPIC model output (Havlik et al 2013) for humid and temperate regions of the world. Crop residue availability was estimated using the SPAM cropland layers (You et al 2014) and coefficients of stover use for animal feeding and harvest indexes for different parts of the world. Grain availability for animal production was taken from the FAO Commodity balance sheets and the availability of occasional feeds like cut and carry grasses and legumes was obtained from literature reviews.

The second step consisted of developing feasible diets for each species in each region and production system. The proportions of each feed in the diet of each species was obtained from extensive information available in the literature and from databases and feeding practice surveys at key research centres in the world (i.e. FAO, ILRI). Data on feed quality was obtained from the databases containing regional feed composition data for each feed (Herrero et al 2008). The third step consisted of estimating productivity. For ruminants, the information on the quantity and quality of the different feeds was then used to parameterise an IPCC tier 3 digestion and metabolism model (RUMINANT, Herrero et al 2002), as described in Herrero et al (2008) and Thornton and Herrero (2010). The model estimated productivity (milk, meat), methane emissions and manure and nitrogen excretion. For monogastrics, information on feed quality was used to estimate feed intake, productivity and feed use efficiency using standard nutrient requirements guidelines (NRC 2008). The estimation of methane and nitrous oxide emissions from manure, and of nitrous oxide from pastures followed an IPCC tier 2 approach, for each species, system and region. Further details are available in the Supplementary Information of Herrero et al. 2013.

All information on animal production (bovine milk, bovine meat, sheep and goat milk, sheep and goat meat, pork, poultry and eggs) and for grains as feed was harmonised with FAOSTAT’s commodity balance sheets at national level following an iterative procedure restricted to deviate +/- 20% from the statistical data in FAOSTAT.

The size of the collection is 1.32 GB, 192 zip files.

Cattle population of Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous District - Ugra rose by 3.52% from 14.2 thousand heads in 2016 to 14.7 thousand heads in 2017. Since the 1.10% decline in 2015, cattle population went up by 2.08% in 2017. Livestock population include all age groups population of livestock of corresponding type. Object - large, medium and small farms. Period - as on the 1st of February.

How many cows are in the world? India is home to the highest number of milk cows of any country, at over 61 million head as of 2024. That year, the European Union had the second most milk cows worldwide, at about 20 million head. Raising milk cows In the United States, the cost of feeding, housing, and caring for a single cow is around 2,260 U.S. dollars per 24 months. Though this price might seem high, when one considers that the average milk cow in the United States produces around 24.3 thousand pounds of milk per year, the investment might be worth it. Dairy production worldwide Although India is by far the largest producer of milk cows, the 27 member states of the European Union collectively produce nearly twice the amount of cow milk of India. The United States came in second place with just under 104 million metric tons of milk, followed by India with about 100 million metric tons. The European Union is also the leading producer of cheese worldwide.

Statistics illustrates market overview of beef (cattle meat) in the World from 2007 to 2024.

Cows population of Amur Region decreased by 1.59% from 37.8 thousand heads in 2016 to 37.2 thousand heads in 2017. Since the 2.45% rise in 2015, cows population dropped by 6.30% in 2017. Livestock population include all age groups population of livestock of corresponding type. Object - large, medium and small farms. Period - as on the 1st of February.

Global distribution of cattle. Livestock contributes directly to the livelihoods and food security of almost a billion people, and affects the diet and health of many more. With estimated standing populations of 1.43 billion cattle, 1.87 billion sheep and goats, 0.98 billion pigs, and 19.60 billion chickens, reliable and accessible information on the distribution and abundance of livestock is needed for a many reasons. These include analyses of the social and economic aspects of the livestock sector; the environmental impacts of livestock such as the production and management of waste, greenhouse gas emissions and livestock-related land-use change and large-scale public health and epidemiological investigations. The Gridded Livestock of the World (GLW) database produced in 2007provied modeled livestock densities of the world, adjusted to match official (FAOSTAT) national estimates for the reference year 2005, at a spatial resolution of 3 minutes of arc (about 5 x 5 km at the equator). Recent methodological improvements have significantly enhanced these distributions: More up-to date and detailed sub-national livestock statistics have been collected; a new, higher resolution set of predictor variables is used; the analytical procedure has been revised and extended to include a more systematic assessment of the model accuracy and the representation of uncertainties associated with the predictions.Values represent head densities (values per square kilometer) - Country totals are adjusted to FAOSTAT values in 2006

This dataset provides livestock data for US Counties within the contiguous US. Census data of cattle, poultry (fowl), hogs, horses and sheep are provided. These data are estimated counts for 1990 based on an average of 1987 and 1992 census data from US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the US Census Bureau.

EOS-WEBSTER provides seven datasets which provide county-level data on agricultural management, crop production, livestock, soil properties, geography and population. These datasets were assembled during the mid-1990's to provide driving variables for an assessment of greenhouse gas production from US agriculture using the DNDC agro-ecosystem model [see, for example, Li et al. (1992), J. Geophys. Res., 97:9759-9776; Li et al. (1996) Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 10:297-306]. The data (except nitrogen fertilizer use) were all derived from publicly available, national databases. Each dataset has a separate DIF.

The US County data has been divided into seven datasets.

US County Data Datasets:

1) Agricultural Management 2) Crop Data (NASS Crop data) 3) Crop Summary (NASS Crop data) 4) Geography and Population 5) Land Use 6) Livestock Populations 7) Soil Properties

Global Self-Employed People in Agricultural Products and Livestock Sector Share by Country (Thousand Units (Persons)), 2023 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

Livestock contributes approximately one-third of global anthropogenic methane (CH4) emissions. Quantifying the spatial and temporal variations of these emissions is crucial for climate change mitigation. Although country-level information is reported regularly through national inventories and global databases, spatially-explicit quantification of century-long dynamics of CH4 emissions from livestock has been poorly investigated. Using the Tier 2 method adopted from the 2019 Refinement to 2006 IPCC guidelines, we estimated CH4 emissions from global livestock at a spatial resolution of 0.083° (~ 9 km at the equator) during the period 1890−2019. We find that global CH4 emissions from livestock increased from 31.8 26.5−37.1 Tg CH4 yr-1 in 1890 to 131.7 [109.6−153.7] Tg CH4 yr-1 in 2019, a fourfold increase in the past 130 years. The growth in global CH4 emissions mostly occurred after 1950 and was mainly attributed to the cattle sector. Our estimate shows faster growth in livestock CH4 emissions as compared to the previous Tier 1 estimates and is ~20% higher than the estimate from FAOSTAT for the year 2019. Regionally, South Asia, Brazil, North Africa, China, the United States, Western Europe, and Equatorial Africa shared the majority of the global emissions in the 2010s. South Asia, tropical Africa, and Brazil have dominated the growth in global CH4 emissions from livestock in the recent three decades. Changes in livestock CH4 emissions were primarily associated with changes in population and national income and were also affected by the policy, diet shifts, livestock productivity improvement, and international trade. The new geospatial information on the magnitude and trends of livestock CH4 emissions identifies emission hotspots and spatial-temporal patterns, which will help to guide meaningful CH4 mitigation practices in the livestock sector at both local and global scales.

In the U.S., there have been approximately three times more beef cows than dairy cows each year since 2001. As of 2024, it was estimated that there were about 28 million beef cows and only about 9.3 million dairy cows. Beef vs. dairy cows Both beef and dairy cows are bred for their respective purposes and farmers often look for different qualities in each. Dairy cows are often bigger, as they can produce a larger volume of milk. Beef cows on the other hand are generally shorter and there is more emphasis on their muscle growth, among other qualities. In 2022, over 28 billion pounds of beef were produced in the United States. U.S. milk production and consumption The United States was among the top consumers of milk worldwide in 2022, surpassed only by India and the European Union. The annual consumption of milk in the U.S. that year was just under 21 million metric tons. To keep up with this level of consumption, milk production in the U.S. has increased by over 60 billion pounds since 1999 and is expected to exceed 228 billion pounds by 2023. California and Wisconsin were the top producing states as of 2022, producing about 41.8 and 31.9 billion pounds of milk, respectively.

Jordan Number of Livestock: Cattle: Aqaba data was reported at 0.000 Unit in Oct 2016. This stayed constant from the previous number of 0.000 Unit for Apr 2016. Jordan Number of Livestock: Cattle: Aqaba data is updated semiannually, averaging 0.000 Unit from Apr 1995 (Median) to Oct 2016, with 43 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 200.000 Unit in Apr 1995 and a record low of 0.000 Unit in Oct 2016. Jordan Number of Livestock: Cattle: Aqaba data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Department of Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Jordan – Table JO.B012: Number of Livestock.

Statistics illustrates consumption, production, prices, and trade of Beef (Cattle Meat) in the World from 2007 to 2024.

The raster dataset consists of a 500m score grid for slaughterhouse industry facilities siting, produced under the scope of FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative, Geographical Information Systems - Multicriteria Decision Analysis for value chain infrastructure location.

The analysis is based on cattle production intensification potential defined using crop production, livestock production systems, and cattle distribution.

The score is achieved by processing sub-model outputs that characterize logistical factors: 1. Supply - Feed, livestock production systems, cattle distribution. 2. Demand - Human population density, large cities, urban areas. 3. Infrastructure - Transportation network (accessibility) It consists of an arithmetic weighted sum of normalized grids (0 to 100): ("Crop Production" * 0.2) + ("Human Population Density" * 0.2) + (“Major Cities Accessibility” * 0.3) + (”Cattle Intensification” * 0.3)

Data publication: 2021-10-18

Contact points:

Metadata Contact: FAO-Data

Resource Contact: Dariia Nesterenko

Data lineage:

Major data sources, FAO GIS platform Hand-in-Hand and OpenStreetMap (open data) including the following datasets: 1. Human Population Density 2020 – WorldPop2020 - Estimated total number of people per grid-cell 1km. 2. Mapspam Production – IFPRI's Spatial Production Allocation Model (SPAM) estimates of crop distribution within disaggregated units. 3. GLW Gridded Livestock of the World - Gridded Livestock of the World (GLW 3 and GLW 2) 4. Global Livestock Production Systems v.5 2011. 5. OpenStreetMap.

Resource constraints:

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-NC- SA 3.0 IGO)

Online resources:

Zipped raster TIF file for Angola Slaughterhouse Location Score: Cattle (Angola- ~ 500m)

Livestock: Number: Cow: Xinjiang data was reported at 8,156.279 Unit th in 2023. This records an increase from the previous number of 6,909.077 Unit th for 2022. Livestock: Number: Cow: Xinjiang data is updated yearly, averaging 3,765.175 Unit th from Dec 1989 (Median) to 2023, with 35 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 8,156.279 Unit th in 2023 and a record low of 3,182.000 Unit th in 2011. Livestock: Number: Cow: Xinjiang data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Bureau of Statistics. The data is categorized under China Premium Database’s Agriculture Sector – Table CN.RID: Number of Livestock: Large Animals: Cow .

Jordan Number of Livestock: Broiler data was reported at 291.500 NA in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 245.000 NA for 2015. Jordan Number of Livestock: Broiler data is updated yearly, averaging 174.900 NA from Dec 1995 (Median) to 2016, with 22 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 291.500 NA in 2016 and a record low of 103.900 NA in 1998. Jordan Number of Livestock: Broiler data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Department of Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Jordan – Table JO.B012: Number of Livestock.

The Livestock dataset contains four variables which provide census data for Cattle, Hogs, Horses (horses, donkeys and camels), and Sheep (sheep and goats). These census data are based on 1990 statistics.

See the references for the sources of these data.

China County Data collection contains seven datasets which were compiled in the early 1990s for use as inputs to the DNDC (Denitrification-Decomposition) model at UNH. DNDC is a computer simulation model for predicting carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) biogeochemistry in agricultural ecosystems. The datasets were compiled from multiple Chinese sources and all are at the county scale for 1990. The datasets which comprise this collection are listed below.

1) Agricultural Management 2) Crops 3) N-Deposition 4) Geography and Population 5) Land Use 6) Livestock 7) Soil Properties

Cattle Vaccines Market Size And Forecast

Cattle Vaccines Market size was valued at USD 13.07 Billion in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 21.33 Billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 6.32% during the forecast period 2024-2031.

Global Cattle Vaccines Market Drivers

The market drivers for the Cattle Vaccines Market can be influenced by various factors. These may include:

Growing Rate Of Diseases In Cattle: Effective vaccines are in high demand in order to protect cattle from infectious diseases such as brucellosis, foot-and-mouth disease, and viral diarrhoea in cows.

Growing Requirement For Animal-Based Protein: The growing number of people on the planet has increased demand for dairy and meat products, which calls for robust herds of cattle. In order to prevent disease outbreaks and maintain constant production, this demand drives the need for vaccines.

Technological Developments In Vaccines: The creation of more potent and effective vaccinations, particularly those that provide extended immunity and broad-spectrum protection, has been facilitated by advancements in immunology and biotechnology. These developments support market expansion.

Governmental Proposals And Assistance: Worldwide, a large number of governments carry out immunisation campaigns and offer financial assistance or subsidies for veterinary services, which includes vaccinations for cattle. These programmes aid in the prevention of livestock illnesses and promote market expansion.

Raising Preventive Healthcare Awareness And Adoption: Vaccination rates are rising as a result of farmers and livestock owners’ growing awareness of the advantages of preventive care for cattle. This is largely due to the education and outreach initiatives that veterinary businesses and organisations run.

Growth Of The Meat And Dairy Industries: The need for cow vaccinations is driven by the expansion of the meat and dairy industries, particularly in emerging economies. The necessity of keeping sizable, healthy herds grows as these sectors develop.

Livestock Diseases’ Effects On The Economy: Cattle disease outbreaks can have serious economic repercussions, such as reduced production, trade restrictions, and animal losses. Vaccination is a reasonably priced way to reduce these dangers, which is fueling demand.

Creation Of Novel And Better Vaccines: New vaccinations with improved protection, fewer side effects, and simpler administration are introduced as a result of ongoing research and development efforts, which has a favourable effect on market expansion.

Standards And Regulations: Vaccine usage is encouraged by strict laws and guidelines pertaining to the health and safety of animals. Adherence to these standards is crucial for the commerce and export of livestock, hence promoting the implementation of vaccination campaigns.

Growing The Population Of Livestock: The number of animals worldwide is increasing, especially in emerging nations where raising cattle is a major source of income. More vaccinations are required to prevent and manage diseases in a greater population of cattle.