cows,
livestock
Due to the war, Ukraine lost 233,700 cows
As of December 1, 1,380,000 cows are kept in Ukraine, which is 13.9% or 233.7 thousand less than last year. During the full-scale invasion, Ukraine lost 172,700 cows. According to preliminary data from the State Statistics Service, which do not include data on the currently occupied regions, the industrial sector (dairy farms) lost 37,700 cows. However, according to the estimates of the Association of Мilk Producers, the losses of dairy farms exceeded 50,000. cows.
According to the State Statistics Service, in general, dairy farms kept 386 thousand cows on December 1, which is 8.4% or 35.6 thousand less than in the corresponding period of 2021.
As of December 1, households kept 994,000 cows, which is 15.9% or 188,100 less than in 2021. Since February, the homestead sector has reduced maintenance by 135,000 head.
The dairy industry suffered the greatest losses in the first months of the war. Occupation of the territories, shelling did not allow to work. Interruptions with milking negatively affected the health of the animals, which subsequently led to culling.
After the «shock period», industrial farms from the front and near-front zones tried to transport livestock to safer regions of the Western and Central regions. This is one of the factors why we can now observe a rapid increase in population in a number of regions. For example, in Ternopil region the increase is 17.5% (16.1 thousand), in Odesa — 14.5% (6.3 thousand), and in Ivano-Frankivsk — 12.2% (4.6 thousand). At the same time, in critical regions, the number fell by almost 50% - in the Kharkiv region, dairy farms reduced their maintenance by 47.3% - to 17.4 thousand, in Sumy — by 5.2% (to 25.6 thousand .), and Chernihivska — by 4.1% (37.9 thousand).
In general, the largest herd of cows is now concentrated in the Poltava (54.1 thousand), Cherkasy (43.1 thousand) and Chernihiv (37.9 thousand) regions.
«Currently, farms in stable regions continue to work and increase livestock at the expense of their own stock, some purchase small batches of heifers from neighboring farms. However, most of them assess their activity as unstable. Along with other factors, the continuation of the war, the difficult work of sea ports, the decrease in prices for dairy products on the world market and the fall in purchasing power in the domestic market will have a major impact on the dairy business in the near future,» says Yana Linetska, an analyst at the Association of Milk Producers.
