🇮🇪 The cattle breeds of Ireland

Ireland's mild, grass-friendly weather has made cattle the heart of its farming since the first farmers brought them ashore in the Neolithic. Dairy herds milked by some 18,000 farmers form the most profitable line of farming, while a big beef-mother herd makes the country a major meat exporter. Most beef goes to EU markets, with Britain the biggest single customer.

• Cattle arrived with Ireland's first farmers between about 4000 and 2500 BC, and dairying began then too.
• Dairying is the best earning branch of Irish farming, at about 5.4 billion litres of milk a year.
• Only France and Spain keep bigger herds of suckler cows, mothers rearing calves for beef.
• The National Ploughing Championships drew 281,000 visitors across three days in 2018.
• Ireland buys in about four fifths of the animal feed, food and drink it needs.

Cattle in Ireland

Cattle came to Ireland with its first farmers, between about 4000 and 2500 BC, and dairying on the island is almost as old, since there were no wild grazing animals such as the aurochs to hunt. The land itself favours the cow: lime-rich soils and mild, damp ocean weather grow grass better than most crops, and through the twentieth century ploughed ground steadily gave way to pasture. Grass now carries the national herd and underpins both main branches of cattle keeping, milk and meat. Dairying is the most profitable part of Irish farming, and beef is one of the country's leading exports, sold chiefly to EU neighbours with Britain the largest single market. Ties with Britain and the continent have long shaped the trade, at times painfully, as when tariffs hit Irish cattle in the 1930s.

Regions and communities

Farming life has differed from place to place. In the nineteenth century, labourers in Connacht and Munster often rented small plots under conacre, a loose arrangement where a plot was worked in return for labour rather than money, while this was less usual in Leinster and Ulster. After the Free State split from Britain in the early 1920s, the two parts of the island drifted apart: in 1926 farming gave most jobs in the Free State but only about one in four in Northern Ireland. Protectionist policies of the 1930s then provoked British tariffs on Irish farm goods, cattle among them, and Free State exports fell by half within a few years.

Milk, butter and beef

Milk is the headline product, about 5.4 billion litres each year, and dairying is the best earning part of agriculture. Much of it leaves the country: dairy exports were worth about €5 billion in 2021, and meat and livestock a further €3.5 billion, of which beef made up €2.1 billion. The EU takes most Irish beef, with Britain the biggest single customer. Factories also turn the raw milk and meat into a range of value-added foods. The trade runs both ways: the island buys in the great majority of its food, drink and animal feed, mostly from Britain, though that flow dipped by a quarter in early 2021 when new customs rules followed Britain's departure from the EU.

Festivals, fairs and faith

The farming calendar has one big public fixture. The National Ploughing Championships grew out of the first inter-country ploughing contest, held at Athy in County Kildare in 1931, and is now a yearly event drawing very large crowds; in 2018 some 281,000 visitors came through the gates over three days. Ploughing, not cattle, takes centre stage, but the gathering is where the country's grass and livestock world meets to talk, compete and show.

Today

More than 6.5 million cattle graze Irish farms, and the animal accounts for over a quarter of agricultural output. The national breeding herd holds about 1.5 million milking cows and just under 890,000 suckler cows, a beef-mother herd bettered only by France and Spain. Beef exports bring in roughly €1.6 billion a year. Farming employs 164,400 people, about 7% of the workforce, and covers two thirds of the land.