page_title: Animal husbandry in Brazil
section_title: Goats and sheep
hierarchical_section_title: Animal husbandry in Brazil / Goats and sheep
context_page_description: In Brazil, the lords of Casa da Torre de Garcia d'Avila pioneered the livestock industry, often using indigenous labor as cowboys. However, a great drought in the Northeast and the discovery of precious minerals in Minas Gerais at the end of the 18th century moved the cattle ranch in Brazil to the Southeast and South, more specifically São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul.
  In 2017, the flocks in Brazil were of the following order: 1,425,699,944 birds, with 242,767,457 chicken and 15,473,981 quail; 214,899,796 cattle, 41,099,460 pigs, 17,976,367 sheep, 9,592,079 goats and 1,381,395 buffaloes, in addition to 5,501,872 equine.
context_section_description: The Northeast Region housed 93.2% of the goat herd (8,944,461 heads) and 64.2% of the sheep herd (11,544,939 heads) in 2017. Bahia concentrated 30.9% of the goat herd and 20,9% of the national sheep herd. Casa Nova (BA) took first place in the municipal ranking with the largest numbers of both species. The South region was the 2nd largest in the country in the herd of sheep, with 4.2 million heads. Sheep shearing activity remained predominant in the South, which is responsible for 99% of wool production in the country. Rio Grande do Sul continued to be the state with the largest national participation, representing 94.1% of the total. The municipalities of Santana do Livramento, Alegrete and Quaraí led the activity. Currently, meat production has become the main objective of sheep farming in Rio Grande do Sul, due to the increase in prices paid to the producer that made the activity more attractive and profitable. There, sheep breeds more adapted to the subtropical climate are used.
  In 2016, Brazil had a goat herd of almost 9.8 million heads. The country has the 21st largest herd in the world. However, the Brazilian herd is mostly found in an area with unfavorable climatic conditions (in the semi-arid region of the Northeast), and goat farming is rarely seen as a business activity and is often considered a marginal activity, used only for survival, not on a commercial scale.
caption: Sheeps in the extreme south of Brazil
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