Ireland is synonymous with cattle

A stereotypical image of Ireland is cattle grazing in a field. The size of field reflects the part of the country you're in at the time, with small stonewalled fields commonly in the west and seemingly unbounded fields in the east and south. I think anyone living in or visiting Ireland would have taken a few of these snaps.

Inisheer, Galway

The picture postcard image, while accurately reflecting the importance of cattle in Ireland from the earliest times, begs the question, just how many cattle reside in Ireland ?

I've occasionally told people, with some degree of pride, that Ireland has more cattle on the island than people. I've seen statistics for the numbers over the years, but two articles in a national newspaper (The Irish Times) caught my eye recently.

In 2010, there were 6.6 million cattle in the Republic of Ireland and just under 1 million of these (15 percent) lived in county Cork. click for cattle numbers

Between 1991 and 2010, the number of farms in the Republic of Ireland decreased by 18%, while the farm size increased. In going forward, perhaps we're going back to the modern equivalent of landlord days in Ireland.

The county with the highest number of farms is Cork and not surprisingly, we learn that one quarter of the high increase in sales of tractors in Ireland in 2012 were bought by farmers in Cork, Galway and Wexford. click for tractor sales

So if you're roving through rural Ireland and you want to test out whether 'cow tipping' is a urban myth... you know where to head to for a plentiful supply of unwilling subjects.

And if you're going that way, drop us a line.