🇲🇳 The cattle breeds of Mongolia

Mongolian cattle live as one part of large mixed herds that move with nomadic herders across the steppe, in a country where pasture covers three quarters of the land and a third of households live from raising livestock. They are kept chiefly for meat. Their greatest danger is the zud, a killing winter that has struck six times in the past decade.

• Pasture covers three quarters of Mongolia's land; only 3% of its people grow crops.
• Cattle are one of six commercial species, kept chiefly for meat.
• A negdel, or herding collective, averaged 61,500 animals in 1985.
• Zuds once arrived about once a decade; six struck in the past ten years.
• The winter of 2024 killed more than six million animals, 9% of all livestock.

Cattle in Mongolia

Mongolia is a country of herders rather than farmers. Most herding families are nomadic or semi-nomadic, moving with their animals across open pasture, which covers three quarters of the land. Cattle are one of six species raised commercially, alongside sheep, goats, horses, camels and pigs, and they are kept chiefly for meat. About a third of all households live from raising livestock, and farming brings in over a tenth of national income. The climate is severe: the growing season lasts under four months, and deadly winters called zuds can push the cold to around minus fifty degrees. Cattle here appear as one strand in a big mixed herd, and this account of them is largely a shared one.

Regions and communities

Rules and roles differed by landscape. On mountain steppe pastures, collective members could keep ten animals per person, up to fifty per household, while in desert regions the allowance rose to fifteen per person and seventy-five per household. Communities were split too: the hundreds of negdels, 255 of them by 1985, concentrated on livestock, while state farms, usually sited on the best land or near mines and industry, put their effort into crops and kept smaller herds of about 26,200 head on average. Herding households in the collectives lived settled in bases called suuri, each with its own equipment and tasks, a sharp change from travelling with the herds.

Milk, butter and beef

Meat comes first: the commercial animals, cattle among them, are raised chiefly for it. Skins and hides join the farm's output, processed by Mongolian industry for use at home and for sale abroad. In 1986 agriculture supplied close to sixty percent of the country's exports, with much of its raw material animal in origin. Cashmere, the one fibre in this story, comes from goats rather than cattle. Even the crops served the herds in part: fields of hay and silage were grown so that livestock could last out the winter.

Today

The herds face hard times. Livestock breeds are increasingly squeezed by land degradation and a changing climate, and the deadliest blow comes from zuds, brutal winters that strip away forage. Once such winters arrived about once a decade; six have struck in the past ten years. The winter of 2024 killed more than six million animals, around nine percent of all livestock, as temperatures fell to roughly minus fifty degrees.