70.9 million livestock animals registered in Mongolia

AKIPRESS.COM - The National Statistical Office of Mongolia presented today the preliminary results of annual livestock census of 2019, which was performed between December 7-17, nationwide, Montsame reported.
According to the census of this year, heads of livestock animals in Mongolia totaled 70 million 949 thousand, which increased by 4.5 million animals or 6.8 percent. Among them, 4.2 million heads of horses, 4.7 million heads of cattle, 472.4 thousand heads of camel, 32.2 million heads of sheep, 29.2 million heads of goats were counted.
In terms of flocks of livestock, sheep account for 45.5 percent in the total number of livestock, with goats for 41.2 percent, cattle for 6.7 percent, horse for 5.9 percent, camels for 0.7 percent. This shows that the proper ratio set at 75:25 between sheep and goat has been still lost with a ratio of 52:48 of this year with the high number of goats causing negative impacts on the environmental sustainability.
Also, the census found that there are about 285.6 thousand livestock herders in Mongolia and 40 percent of them has taken out loans.
In 2018, the total number of livestock animals in Mongolia reached 66.5 million, increasing by 241.2 thousand or 0.4 percent compared to the previous year 2017. The 2018 census also showed that 68.4 percent of all 290 thousand herders were covered by health insurance and 26.2 percent by social insurance.