{"id":414845,"date":"2026-04-24T07:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T07:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/414845\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T07:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T07:58:09","slug":"donegal-listed-as-irelands-most-populous-sheep-county-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/414845\/","title":{"rendered":"Donegal listed as Ireland\u2019s most populous sheep county in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Government has published the 2025 National Sheep and Goat Census, which details how Donegal has the highest population of sheep in the country.<\/p>\n<p>In total, there were 6,142 flocks of sheep in Donegal with a total population of 538,511 sheep. The next highest county was Mayo with 448,226 sheep, followed by Galway with 400,222 sheep.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Nationally, the population of sheep was recorded at slightly under 3.7 million, meaning that Donegal accounted for over 14% of all sheep in the country in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The number of sheep in Donegal equates to more than three sheep per person living within the county.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Limerick was the county that recorded the lowest population of sheep, at 18,299, followed by Dublin at 23,094.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>READ NEXT:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.donegallive.ie\/news\/home\/2066670\/planning-resubmitted-to-donegal-county-council-for-wind-turbines-near-dungloe.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Planning resubmitted to Donegal County Council for wind turbines near Dungloe<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The 2025 National Sheep and Goat Census is required by the EU Animal Health Law (Commission Regulation (EU) 2016\/429). The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) carry out a census of sheep and goats annually.<\/p>\n<p>This census report records the number of sheep and goats kept in Ireland on December 31, 2025, and is based on data submitted to the Department by March 30, 2026.<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government has published the 2025 National Sheep and Goat Census, which details how Donegal has the highest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1485,615,27127,4500,1523,61,60,1396,8764,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-414845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-donegal","9":"tag-dublin","10":"tag-farming","11":"tag-galway","12":"tag-government","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-limerick","16":"tag-mayo","17":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}