🇲🇹 The cattle breeds of Malta

Malta's cattle are a modest dairy herd on a small Mediterranean island state. Around 14,000 head are milked, alongside sheep and goats, on tiny, fragmented smallholdings, many run part-time. Farming is a small slice of the economy, but it matters for livelihoods, and the cow's milk and cheese are part of what the islands raise for their own tables.

• About 14,000 cattle are kept in Malta, milked with sheep and goats.
• Cattle, sheep and goats are all raised for milk and cheese.
• Malta's total livestock fell 23.6% between 2010 and 2020.
• Nine in ten Maltese farms are smaller than two hectares.
• Malta grows under a quarter of the food its people eat.

Cattle in Malta

Cattle keep a modest place in Maltese farming. Malta, an island state of just 316 square kilometres, farms on tiny, fragmented smallholdings, nine in ten of them under two hectares, many tended part-time. In this setting, roughly 14,000 cattle serve mainly as milk animals, kept alongside 16,000 sheep and 5,700 goats. The livestock Malta is noted for are others: the critically endangered Maltese donkey, the dairy Maltese goat and the Kelb tal-Fenek hunting hound. Farming overall brings in well under one percent of national output, yet it matters for rural livelihoods and for keeping island traditions alive. The Gozo razzett, a cubic farmhouse born of a medieval Mediterranean habit of walking to the fields at first light, shows how deeply that farming culture runs.

Milk, butter and beef

Milk and cheese are what Maltese cattle give. The islands keep roughly 14,000 head, milked alongside 16,000 sheep and 5,700 goats, with dairy from all three turned into cheese. In a country that grows under a quarter of the food its people eat, that home dairy counts among what the islands do supply for themselves. Malta's other farm foods come from different animals and crops: pork, chicken and eggs, honey, wine from two wineries founded in the early 1900s, and rabbit, the heart of the national dish, Stuffat tal-Fenek. The cow's own contribution stays squarely in the dairy.

Today

Numbers are drifting down. Malta's statistics office counted 41,652 head of livestock in 2010 and 31,825 in 2020, a fall of 23.6 percent, while farm holdings dropped by about a sixth and farm labour by more than a quarter. Cattle stand at roughly 14,000. Farming returns 0.7 percent of national output and employs 1.1 percent of workers, so the dairy herd carries on within a small, largely part-time sector on a built-up island.