Poultry is the runaway leader when it comes to the most popular type of livestock in the UK, with 172,607,000 recorded in 2016. This is also up considerably from the 167,579,000 recorded in 2015.
According to analysis by MediaWorks of newly released data, the next most popular type of livestock across the nation, that being sheep and lambs, is a distant second with 33,943,000 recorded in 2016.
When it comes to analysing the livestock of specific countries across the UK, poultry is also popular in Scotland — with 10,861,687 non-LFA examples and 3,253,061 LFA examples recorded in 2016 — while sheep and lambs is the standout type of livestock in Wales, with 9,810,500 examples recorded in 2016.
It should also be noted that all four types of livestock in the UK (poultry, sheep and lambs, cattle and calves, and pigs) have seen increases in figures from 2015 to 2016.
The analysis was conducted following the Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2016, Farming Facts & Figures, Wales 2017 and Scotland’s Agriculture Facts & Figures 2017 reports.