Livestock Farms Drop 2% in U.S. in 2004

WASHINGTON - Jan 31/05 - SNS -- The number of operations with cattle totaled 989,460 during 2004, down 2% from 2003 and 5% below 2002, according to the USDA.

Beef cow operations in 2004 were down 2% from 2003 and 4% below 2002. Milk cow operations were 6% below last year and 11% below two years ago.

The three operation classes: cattle, beef cows, and milk cows, are classified into size groups independently. Therefore, it is possible to have more beef cow operations in a particular size group than cattle operations. As an example, an operator with 75 cattle and 40 beef cows would be classified in the 50-99 size group for cattle and 1-49 size group for beef cows.

The number of operations with hogs totaled 69,420 during 2004, down 6% from 2003 and 9% from 2002. Places with 2,000 or more head accounted for 79% of the inventory.

The number of operations with sheep totaled 67,160 during 2004, down 1% from both 2003 and 2002. Of all sheep operations that include breeding sheep, 92.0% were comprised of 1-99 head, 6.5% had 100-499 head, and the remaining 1.5% were operations with 500 head or more. Operations with 1-99 head account for 30.3% of the inventory, 100-499 head account for 22.0% of the inventory, and 500+ head account for 47.7% of the inventory.

This report contains the first annual estimates of Puerto Rico livestock operations. These estimates include the number of operations for sheep and lambs, hogs and pigs, all cattle and calves, beef cows, and milk cows, and can be found within the respective commodity tables.

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