There are 9,200 dairy farmers in Ireland that keep only dairy cows while there are just under 46,700 suckler farmers in the country that keep only beef-breed or suckler cows.
The figures from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) are based data from December 31, 2022, and also show that 13,490 farms in Ireland keep both dairy and suckler cows.
While the number of suckler farms is greater, the number of dairy cows is by far larger than the number of suckler cows in the country.
For the purpose of this article, a cow is defined as a female animal registered as the dam of at least one calf on or before the profile date. Dairy herds are defined as herds with dairy cows and suckler herds are defined as herds with suckler cows.
On December 31, 2022, there were just over 838,000 suckler cows in the country. On the same date, there were over 1.5 million dairy cows in the country.
Dairy cows account for 64% of the total number of cows while sucklers account for 36% of the total cow numbers.
The county with the largest number of dairy herds is Cork with 4,467 dairy herds.
This is followed by counties Tipperary, Kerry and Limerick with 2,157, 1,787 and 1,771 dairy herds in each of these counties respectively.
Galway has the largest number of suckler herds with 6,795 suckler herds registered in the county.
This is followed by counties Mayo, Cork and Clare, with 5,842, 4,863 and 4,012 suckler herds in these counties respectively.
Interestingly, there are more suckler herds in Co. Cork than dairy herds, albeit the dairy herds are larger in size.
The county with the smallest average herd size with dairy-breed cows is Leitrim with 131 herds with dairy cows and an average dairy herd size of 60.5 cattle (includes all stock on farm).
The county with the largest average dairy herd size is Waterford with 885 dairy herds and an average herd size of 340.2 cattle (includes all stock on farm).
The county with the smallest average suckler herd size is Donegal with 3,539 suckler herds with an average herd size of 41 cattle (includes all stock on farm).
The county with the largest average suckler herd size is Carlow with 670 suckler herds with an average herd size of 81.2 cattle (includes all stock on farm).