Fewer farms, but larger stocks of animals: This trend is shown by figures from the State Office for Statistics on cattle husbandry in Bavaria. In the past ten years, the number of farms with cattle has decreased by more than 25 percent, the number of animals by only 12.4 percent.
As the state office announced on Tuesday in Fürth, there were almost 39,000 farms with cattle farming in Bavaria as of May 3, 2023, which is two percent less than a year ago. In 2013, more than 52,000 farms kept cattle. More than 2.8 million cattle lived on Bavaria’s pastures or in the stables in May 2023, 37.8 percent of them are dairy cows. On average, each cattle farm had 73 animals – that’s one more cattle than the average for the previous year. Ten years ago, an average herd consisted of 62 animals.