The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has recently published a county-by-county breakdown on the number of suckler-bred calves born in each county across the Republic of Ireland in 2020.

For the purpose of the table, the beef calves have been determined by the breed of dam.

The information was published in the DAFM’s Animal Identification and Movement (AIM) System Bovine Statistics Report for 2020.

The report contains useful data and statistical information which, according to DAFM, “is used by interested stakeholders to monitor trends in the beef and dairy sectors”.

The table below gives a county-by-county breakdown of the number of suckler-bred calves born in 2020.

The number of suckler-bred calves born in each county is given as a percentage of the total number of calves born in that county in the column on the right.

CountyBeef Calves% Beef calves
Carlow13,62143.1%
Cavan40,76151.3%
Clare66,23266.2%
Cork65,06114.7%
Donegal35,86562.3%
Dublin3,09458.4%
Galway91,78970%
Kerry42,02929.5%
Kildare15,35445%
Kilkenny27,76722.1%
Laois28,77637.1%
Leitrim23,81491.8%
Limerick30,94820.8%
Longford22,97769.1%
Louth10,25635.6%
Mayo67,81680.2%
Meath28,89333%
Monaghan27,78043.8%
Offaly26,86344.2%
Roscommon46,34785.3%
Sligo28,24777.7%
Tipperary48,21921.7%
Waterford17,27516.8%
Westmeath31,53552.4%
Wexford27,78426%
Wicklow19,65444.1%
Total:888,75737.22%

As the chart above indicates, Galway had the highest number of suckler calves last year at 91,789 calves registered to a beef breed of dam.

Looking at percentages, just over 37% of all calves born in Ireland last year were progeny of suckler breeding while the remainder of calves all came from the dairy herd.

Suckler bred calves accounted for 70% of all calves born in Galway last year.

Leitrim had the highest percentage of beef calves born at 91.8% followed by Roscommon at 85.3%.

A total of 888,757 calves were born in the Irish suckler herd last year.