Cattle on the pampas, sheep on Welsh hills, pigs in the southern Netherlands, buffaloes along the Indus and 27.7 billion chickens nearly everywhere. A map of the world's farm animals every 10 km, and the story of how the herds and flocks have changed since 1961.
Farm animals are so familiar that it is easy to forget how many there are. There are about 1.6 billion cattle, 1.4 billion sheep, 1.2 billion goats and 1.0 billion pigs, and around 27.7 billion chickens, all alive at the same moment. But where are they? Not where the people are, and not spread evenly over the grass. Some countries are a single animal's country; some valleys hold more pigs than any city holds people.
This page puts them on a map. The FAO's Gridded Livestock of the World estimates how many cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks and horses lived in every 10 km square in 2015, by spreading census counts across the land with a statistical model. FAOSTAT gives each country's herds and flocks every year from 1961 to 2024, for eighteen kinds of animal from camels to guinea pigs. Pick an animal, then tap anywhere on the map.
In 2024 FAOSTAT counted about 35.3 billion farm animals alive at once, 4.3 for each of the world's 8.1 billion people. Birds are most of them: 29.6 billion chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys and other birds (3.6 per person), 93% of them chickens. The mammals add up to 5.5 billion, about two for every three people.
For every 100 people
Farm animals alive in 2024 for every 100 people in the world (FAOSTAT stocks; World Bank population). Hover for totals.
Since 1961 the world's human population has grown 2.7 times. Chickens have grown 7.1 times, from 3.9 billion to 27.7 billion, and ducks 6.6 times. Goats (3.4 times) and camels (3.4) have grown faster than people, mostly in Africa and Asia, which now hold 95% of the world's goats. Cattle have grown more slowly than people: there were 0.31 cattle per person in 1961 and 0.19 in 2024. Horses and mules have fallen, as tractors and lorries took their work.
How the herds and flocks have grown
World stocks as a multiple of 1961 (FAOSTAT). The grey line is people.
The chickens also moved. In 1961 Asia had 28% of the world's chickens; in 2024 it has 61%. Pigs had their own shock: African swine fever swept through China in 2018 and 2019, and China's pig herd fell by 28% in a single year, 118 million pigs, enough to pull the world total down by 12%. China's herd has since recovered to 427 million.
In 40 of the 159 countries with at least a million people, farm mammals outnumber humans. Mongolia is the extreme: 57.7 million sheep, goats, cattle, horses and camels for 3.5 million people, 16.4 each, and the most goats (6.5) and sheep (6.9) per person anywhere. Uruguay has 3.5 cattle per person, the most in the world, and Denmark is the only country of a million people or more with more pigs than people (1.9 each).
Farm mammals per person
Cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, donkeys, mules, camels, llamas and alpacas per person, 2024; countries with a million people or more.
New Zealand is the country of sheep jokes, and the joke is getting old. Its flock peaked in 1982 at 70.3 million, 22.3 sheep per person. By 2024 it was down 66% to 23.6 million, 4.5 per person, while its cattle herd grew by about a fifth. Australia has 2.9 sheep per person, and the Sahel countries, from Mauritania and Mali to Chad and South Sudan, all appear among the countries where sheep, goats or cattle outnumber people.
Some animals are spread around the world; others belong mostly to one country. China has 44% of the world's pigs, 65% of its ducks and 87% of its geese. India has 53% of the buffaloes, and India, Pakistan and China together have 89%. A quarter of the world's camels (26%) are in Chad. Cattle, sheep and horses are shared more widely: the biggest herds, in Brazil, China and Mexico, hold 15%, 13% and 11%.
The biggest herd's share of the world
Share of the world's stock in the country with most, 2024 (FAOSTAT). Hover for the top three.
The grid shows the same thing on the ground. Half of the world's pigs live on 1.3% of its land and half of its chickens on 1.4%, while half of its cattle need 5.9% and half of its sheep 3.8%. Grazing animals spread out; pigs and poultry crowd together, in sheds, around cities and along the feed and meat supply chains. The densest pig country of all is the south-east of the Netherlands, where the grid puts about 3,449 pigs on a square kilometre around Eindhoven.
Half of the world's pigs live on 1.3% of its land.
How much land holds half of them
The smallest share of the world's land (Antarctica left out) that holds half of each animal, from the densest 10 km cells down (GLW, 2015).
To compare a cow with a chicken, farm statistics use livestock units, a rough measure of size and feed: in FAOSTAT's units a cow counts for about 0.64 of a unit on world average, a sheep or goat for about 0.10, a pig 0.25 and a chicken 0.01. Weighted this way, cattle are the main farm animal in 127 of 194 countries, chickens in 33, pigs in 22 and sheep in 8. Across all countries cattle make up 51% of the world's livestock units.
The "Main animal" layer of the map does the same for every 10 km square. Cattle lead on 42% of the world's land. The exceptions make a map of their own: pigs across China's farm belt and in Denmark, the southern Netherlands and Catalonia, buffaloes along the Ganges and Indus, sheep in Patagonia, the Karoo, western and south-eastern Australia and the hills of Wales, sheep and goats along the desert edges of the Sahel, Arabia, Somalia and Iran, and chickens in the American south-east, Arabia and Iran. About 39% of the land has less than one livestock unit per square kilometre.
The United Kingdom has 31.0 million sheep, more than any other country in Europe outside Turkey, against 9.4 million cattle, 4.7 million pigs and 167 million chickens. By livestock units cattle are its main animal (57%), then sheep (21%). The grid shows the country divided by its hills. Wales has 9% of the UK's land but 26% of its sheep, 3.5 times England's density, and Powys alone has 10% of all UK sheep. Cattle are densest in Northern Ireland (109 per km²) and the dairy pastures of Cheshire, Cornwall and Somerset. Pigs and chickens belong to the east: 81% of UK pigs are in England, the most in North Yorkshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and the densest in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and Herefordshire and Lincolnshire have the most chickens per square kilometre.
Sheep per km² by county
UK counties, GLW 2015.
Pigs per km² by county
UK counties, GLW 2015.
Ireland is cattle country above all: 6.3 million cattle for 5.4 million people, 1.2 each, and 88% of its livestock units. Across the UK, cattle are the main animal in 74 of 88 counties and sheep in 9, from Shetland and the Scottish Borders to Powys and Gwynedd; pigs lead in Norfolk, Suffolk and the East Riding of Yorkshire.
The grid. Gridded Livestock of the World version 4 (GLW 4) gives the number of cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks and horses in each 5 arc minute cell (about 10 km at the equator) in 2015. FAO and its partners collected sub-national census counts, fitted random forest models of animal density against climate, land cover, access to markets and other covariates, and used the predictions to share each census total among the cells inside it (the 'dasymetric' layer used here). Summed over the world, the grid matches FAOSTAT's 2015 totals to within a few per cent (100.3% for cattle). It is a model: it is most reliable where census areas are small, and it can spread animals thinly over remote land or pile them near towns where the covariates say so.
Counts by country. FAOSTAT's 'Stocks' element, the number of animals alive at one time in each year, 1961 to 2024, matched to Natural Earth countries. China is mainland China (FAOSTAT also has a 'China' total that adds Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao). Former states (the USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and others) count in world totals but have no country of their own here, so country series for their successors start in the early 1990s. Per person figures use World Bank population for the same year.
Livestock units. FAOSTAT's livestock patterns tables give each country's stocks in livestock units; dividing by head gives each country's own factor for each animal (ducks take the chicken factor). The main animal of a country or a 10 km square is the one with most livestock units; squares with less than one unit per km² are left blank. UK county figures share each 10 km square among the counties it touches by area.
What this is not. These are animals alive at one moment, not animals slaughtered in a year: a broiler chicken lives about six weeks, so far more chickens are raised each year than are alive at once. FAOSTAT figures are official national figures and FAO estimates, of uneven quality; nomadic herds are hard to count. The grid is for 2015 and does not show change since. Wild animals, reindeer, fish and insects are not included.