Economic Report on Scottish Agriculture, 2016

8.2 Livestock (Table C8)

Chart 8.2 shows the share each country had of the UK population for each of the main livestock groups. The charts show that Scotland has relatively larger sectors for sheep (20 per cent) and cattle (18 per cent) than it does of poultry (eight per cent) and pigs (seven per cent).

Chart 8.2: Percentage share of UK livestock, by country, June 2015

Northern Ireland had a similar share to Scotland for cattle, but with a much lower share for sheep. Compared to Scotland, Wales had a higher share of sheep and a lower share of other livestock groups (including a particularly low number of pigs).

England, naturally, had the highest share of all livestock groups but with a profile opposite to Scotland, being particularly dominant in the pig and poultry populations and comparatively less so in cattle and sheep.

Chart 8.3 shows the proportion of different types of cattle ^[13] within each country. In Scotland, the number of beef cows (constituting 24 per cent of total cattle in Scotland) was larger than the number of dairy cows (ten per cent), contrasting with the profiles in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, where the numbers of dairy outstripped the number of beef cows.

Chart 8.3: Cattle type, by country, June 2015