Thailand's beef herd in open data: 9.5 million head, 7 per farmer

You hear two stories about Thai beef cattle, often in the same week: "everyone is raising cows now" and "prices are down, nobody is buying". Both may be true in a village, a season or a market. But few of us ever look at the official numbers behind them, or at the route an animal takes from the farm to the buyer.

This post walks through those numbers one table at a time. All of them are public, most of them come straight from the Department of Livestock Development (กรมปศุสัตว์, DLD), and you can download them yourself in a minute. At the end we look at what they mean for a small farm: whom you sell to, and why a scale and a notebook matter more than they seem to.

Where the official numbers come from

The DLD keeps a livestock farmer registration system (ระบบทะเบียนเกษตรกรผู้เลี้ยงสัตว์), and it publishes figures from that register on the government open data portal, data.go.th. Two datasets matter for this post:

• จำนวนโคเนื้อ (number of beef cattle): head counts per province, yearly, from B.E. 2564 to 2568 (2021 to 2025). Its metadata names the source as the DLD livestock farmer registration system, with provincial livestock offices collecting the data, and the unit is head (ตัว).
• จำนวนเกษตรกรผู้เลี้ยงโคเนื้อ (number of beef cattle farmers): the number of farmers per province, from the same register and the same years.

Both are single CSV files under an open licence. Each row is one province in one year, with columns that include year, region, livestock zone, province and value. There is no national total row, so you add the provinces up yourself.

Try it: open the dataset page, download the CSV, open it in a spreadsheet, filter the year column to one year and sum the value column. That sum is the national figure for that year. The tables below are those sums, computed from the files downloaded on 25 October 2026.

One thing to keep in mind: a register counts what has been registered. When the number jumps, part of the jump can be more animals, and part can be more farmers signing up or updating their records. The CSV can't tell those apart.

Table 1: the national herd, year by year

Sums of the 77 provinces in the DLD beef cattle CSV; percentages are my own arithmetic.

               BEEF CATTLE ON THE DLD REGISTER                  
               head, axis starts at zero                        
               ▮           ▃▃▃▃▃    ▆▆▆▆▆    █████    ▄▄▄▄▄     
               │           █████    █████    █████    █████     
               │  ▁▁▁▁▁    █████    █████    █████    █████     
               │  █████    █████    █████    █████    █████     
               │  █████    █████    █████    █████    █████     
               │  █████    █████    █████    █████    █████     
               │  █████    █████    █████    █████    █████     
               │  █████    █████    █████    █████    █████     
  ^__^         │  █████    █████    █████    █████    █████     
  (oo)\_____   │  █████    █████    █████    █████    █████     
  (__)\     )\ │  █████    █████    █████    █████    █████     
      ||---||  │  █████    █████    █████    █████    █████     
               └─────────────────────────────────────────────── 
                  2021     2022     2023     2024     2025      
                                                                
 / |  |  |   / |  |  |  |   / /  /   / /  |   / |  |  |  |  /  |

Two things stand out. The big jump happened between 2564 and 2565. After that, the herd grew slowly and then dipped a little in 2568. So "booming" describes 2021 to 2022 much better than it describes the last few years.

The sum for 2566 (2023) also lines up with published research. A study of smallholder beef farms by Thannithi and colleagues, published online in November 2024 and citing the DLD, gives 9.7 million beef cattle and 1.4 million farmers in 2023, and says both rose by about 54.98% and 56.76% compared with 2020. That 2020 baseline is not in the open dataset (it starts at 2564), so you can't check that percentage from the CSV alone. It's a good reminder to always ask "compared with which year?" when someone quotes a growth figure.

Table 2: farmers and average herd size

Farmer counts summed from the DLD farmer CSV; head per farmer is the herd sum in Table 1 divided by the farmer sum.

Here is the most useful number in this post: an average of about seven head per farmer. The 2566 figure, 6.77, is the same average herd size that Thannithi et al. report from DLD data, which is a nice cross-check that the sums are right.

Seven cows is a family herd, not a ranch. It also explains why the farmer count jumped together with the herd in 2565: the growth came mostly from many more people keeping a few animals, not from a few farms getting big. The average has crept up slowly since then.

An average hides a lot, of course. A province with a handful of large fattening farms and many two-cow households can show the same average as a province of mid-sized herds. The CSV has no breakdown by farm size, so treat "seven" as a picture of the typical scale, not a rule.

Table 3: where the cattle are

Computed from the region column of the DLD beef cattle CSV. The file uses four regions, so the East and West are counted in Central.

More than half of Thailand's registered beef cattle are in the Northeast, and that share grew over the five years. In 2568 the five provinces with the most head in the file were Surin, Ubon Ratchathani, Nakhon Ratchasima, Buriram and Sisaket, all in the Northeast.

An older baseline, and why numbers disagree

If you read older reports you will meet very different numbers. A 2018 review by Bunmee and colleagues says Thailand had "about 4.9 million head" of beef cattle, that about 1.0 million are slaughtered each year, and that the Northeast held 48% of them, with 16% in the North and 12% in the South. Its own table puts slaughter at 890,000 to 962,000 head a year for 2015 to 2017.

So did the herd double in a few years? Not necessarily. Three things change when you compare sources:

1. The year. The review cites statistics from 2014 and 2015 and its table covers 2015 to 2017; the open dataset starts in 2021.
2. The method. The review's head count cites Office of Agricultural Economics statistics, and its passage on regions cites a 2014 FAO livestock sector brief; the open dataset is a farmer register. A register grows when more farmers register.
3. The regions. The review lists the North, Northeast and South separately with other regions not named, while the DLD file folds the East and West into Central. A "share of the Northeast" can move just because the borders of the other regions moved.

The safe habit is to compare like with like: the same dataset, the same method, year against year.

The three market segments

Numbers tell you how many cattle there are. They don't tell you who buys them. For that, the Bunmee review splits the Thai beef market into three parts:

• Traditional market, about 50%. Farmers sell through auction markets or to brokers and middlemen, often for cash on the spot. Culled and old cows go here too. The buyers are mainly wholesalers and slaughterhouse owners, plus some ranchers buying stock to breed or fatten.
• Mid-value market, about 49%. Cattle go through marketing groups or cooperatives to slaughterhouses, and the beef goes on to fresh markets, supermarkets and restaurants. (The review's abstract says 40% for this "modern" segment while the body says 49%, so take the exact split loosely.)
• Premium market, about 1%. High-marbling beef from fattening farms, sold in supermarkets, restaurants and luxury stores. The review defines this segment by marbling score.

The Phayao study (100 farms in Phayao province, surveyed from November 2022 to June 2023) describes what each segment looks like on the farm:

In that study, net profit per animal rose from the traditional to the premium group, but so did cost: premium farms spent far more on concentrate feed and labour. One province and one season is not the whole country, so read it as a description of how the segments work, not as a promise of earnings.

How cattle leave the farm

The same Phayao study reports how cattle from the three groups of farms were distributed:

                                            ┌──────────────────┐
                                            │ MIDDLEMAN        │
                       ════o═══════o══o════o│ 65%              │
                      /                     │ weight by eye    │
  /\  /\        <+>  o       ·              └──────────────────┘
          ·      │  /                                           
┌─────────┐      │ /                        ┌──────────────────┐
│  FARM   │      │/                         │ SECONDARY MKT    │
│  (oo)   │o─o──o/──────────────o────────o──│ 25%              │
│   --    │       \                         │                  │
└─────────┘        o                        └──────────────────┘
                    \                           ·               
                     \                      ┌──────────────────┐
                      \                     │ COMMUNITY ENT.   │
                       ·····················│ 10%              │
                                            │ on the scale     │
                                            └──────────────────┘

The detail behind those numbers matters more than the percentages. According to the study:

• Middlemen judged the live weight of an animal "simply by observation", and the price depended on the middleman's satisfaction because farmers were in a poor bargaining position.
• Community enterprises paid on live weight measured with scales, and the medium channel applied a dressing percentage of 50% or more of live weight after slaughter.
• Premium cooperatives set prices by carcass grade and meat quality.

What this means for a small farm

None of this tells you what the price will be next month, and I won't guess. But the numbers do suggest a few practical habits.

You are one of more than a million sellers. With an average herd of about seven head, almost no single farm can set the price. What you can control is how well you know your own animals when a buyer arrives.

Know the weight before the buyer guesses it. When the price is based on an estimate by eye, the person who guesses best has the advantage. Weighing your animals (on a scale, or at least with a weigh band checked against a scale now and then) and writing the number down lets you compare an offer with the animal's real weight. It also shows you whether your feeding is working, month by month.

Keep simple records. Date of birth or purchase, breed or cross, weights over time, vaccinations, and what you sold and for how much. Records are what let you move from "I think she's about 350 kg" to "she gained this much since the last weighing".

Choose the channel on purpose. A middleman pays quickly and comes to the farm. A community enterprise or cooperative may weigh and grade, but usually asks for a certain type of animal, weight or schedule. Neither is right for everyone. Look at what your cattle are (breed, age, weight) and which segment they fit, then ask buyers how they set the price before you agree.

How to keep checking

The numbers above will change when the DLD adds the next year. To keep up:

• Herd and farmer counts: the beef cattle and beef cattle farmer datasets on data.go.th, updated yearly.
• Farm-gate prices: the Office of Agricultural Economics (สำนักงานเศรษฐกิจการเกษตร, OAE) publishes the monthly national average price farmers receive for beef cattle, and the DLD publishes monthly farm-gate prices for livestock products, beef cattle included.

Download, sum, compare the same dataset year against year, and you'll have your own answer the next time someone tells you the herd is booming.

Sources

• Department of Livestock Development, จำนวนโคเนื้อ (number of beef cattle), dataset dld_01_0201, data.go.th (CSV downloaded 25 Oct 2026)
• Department of Livestock Development, จำนวนเกษตรกรผู้เลี้ยงโคเนื้อ (number of beef cattle farmers), dataset dld_01_0202, data.go.th (CSV downloaded 25 Oct 2026)
• Office of Agricultural Economics, ราคาโคเนื้อที่เกษตรกรขายได้ (beef cattle price received by farmers), dataset data-baer-0402, data.go.th
• Department of Livestock Development, ราคาสินค้าปศุสัตว์ (livestock product prices), dataset econ_21_01, data.go.th
• Thannithi W., Intawicha P., Kongmuang N., Inyawilert W., Tiantong A., Saengwong S. (2025). Understanding Smallholder Beef Production: Cost Structures, Market Channels, and Pathways to Enhanced Profitability. Advances in Animal and Veterinary Sciences 13(1): 16–25 (published online 26 Nov 2024; open access PDF).
• Bunmee T., Chaiwang N., Kaewkot C., Jaturasitha S. (2018). Current situation and future prospects for beef production in Thailand: A review. Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences 31(7): 968–975.
• Photo: A grass field and cattle in countryside of Thailand, Earng.oi, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
• Photo: Brahman Thai cow, PumpkinSky, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
• Photo: A hoard of cattle on the road in Thailand, Angkun-ane, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons