Published 9 August 2026 · v1.0.0 · PIB/Rajya Sabha answer, 17 December 2025 · DAHD Basic Animal Husbandry Statistics 2025, 18 November 2025

The headcount Parliament was given is a 2019 snapshot

A newer, fully digitised census exists. Its results just aren't out yet.

On 17 December 2025, the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying answered a Rajya Sabha question on livestock population with a state-wise table of cattle, buffalo, sheep and goat numbers — sourced, the answer says explicitly, to the “20th Livestock Census All India Reports.” That census was conducted in 2019 and put India's total livestock population at 536.76 million, a 4.8% rise over the 19th Census in 2012. It is six years old at the point it was cited in Parliament.

A newer count exists, at least in principle. The 21st Livestock Census — fully digitised, with mobile-app data collection, GPS-tagged enumeration and breed-level detail across all 219 ICAR-NBAGR-recognised indigenous breeds, covering roughly 6.6 lakh villages and 89,000 urban wards through some one lakh field officials — was launched on 25 October 2024, with the ministry stating it was “likely to be completed by 31st March, 2025.” On that exact date, in a written Lok Sabha reply on district-level livestock numbers for Rajasthan's Sriganganagar and Hanumangarh districts, the same ministry stated: “the enumeration work of 21st Livestock census is ongoing” — and answered the question using 20th Census figures instead. This article could not locate any published state-wise result set from the 21st Census as of research, eight months after its own target completion date and nine months before the December 2025 Rajya Sabha answer repeated the same fallback. Until the 21st Census numbers are released, every state-wise livestock-population figure the government cites — including the one placed on the record in December 2025 — is a 2019 measurement of a sector that has since grown at nearly 13% a year.

Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh carry India's largest cattle herds; Uttar Pradesh's buffalo count — 3.3 crore — is more than double the next-largest state's. Rajasthan tops goat population outright and ranks third in sheep. This is the population base the country's dairy economy sits on, as counted in 2019.

What the same states actually produced in 2024-25

Scale and efficiency turn out to be two different rankings.

The Basic Animal Husbandry Statistics 2025 report — DAHD's current-year survey, covering March 2024 to February 2025, published 18 November 2025 — measures milk production directly rather than inferring it from herd size. National milk production reached 247.87 million tonnes in 2024-25, up 3.58% on 2023-24, with per-capita availability rising to 485 grams/day. The sector's compound annual growth rate from 2014-15 to 2023-24 was 12.77%, and livestock now contributes more than 31% of agricultural GVA and 5.5% of India's total GVA. Globally, India ranks 1st in milk, 2nd in eggs, and 4th in meat.

Uttar Pradesh's position holds on raw output: it produces 15.66% of India's milk, more than any other state, consistent with its lead in cattle-plus-buffalo population. But its 2024-25 growth rate was 0.09% — essentially flat — the slowest of any of the 15 major producing states charted in the report, and its yield rate for exotic/crossbred cattle, 9.16 kg/day, sits in the middle of the pack. Punjab is the inverse case. It does not appear among the top 10 states by cattle-plus-buffalo population in the 2019 census — its herd is a fraction of Uttar Pradesh's — yet it posts the highest cattle yield rate in the country (14.10 kg/day for exotic/crossbred cattle, against a national spread that tops out elsewhere around 11), the highest per-capita milk availability (1,318 g/day, more than two-and-a-half times the national average), and the fastest milk-production growth among the 15 major states in 2024-25.

Rajasthan sits between the two patterns: it ranks second in both population (goat and cattle-plus-buffalo counts are both large) and milk share (14.82%), and also posts strong growth (5.78%) and the second-highest per-capita availability (1,229 g/day) after Punjab — a state that is both large and getting more efficient at the same time, which the other two single-axis stories in this article are not.

Sources. State-wise cattle, buffalo, sheep and goat population and the 20th Livestock Census reference — Government of India, Rajya Sabha unstarred question answer by Minister Rajeev Ranjan Singh alias Lallan Singh, Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying, PIB release ID 2205263, 17 December 2025 (pib.gov.in). 20th Livestock Census methodology, 2019 conduct date and the 536.76 million national total — Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying's own published 20th Livestock Census materials and contemporaneous PIB coverage (PRID 1588304). 21st Livestock Census scope, digitisation, 25 October 2024 launch and 31 March 2025 target completion date — Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying public launch announcements. The 25 March 2025 confirmation that enumeration was “ongoing” and the Rajasthan district-level figures answered with 20th Census data instead — Government of India, written Lok Sabha reply by Minister of State Prof. S.P. Singh Baghel, PIB release ID 2114720, 25 March 2025 (pib.gov.in), read directly. This article could not locate a published state-wise 21st Census result set as of research and states that gap explicitly rather than assuming one exists. National and state-wise milk production, growth rates, yield rates and per-capita availability (Exhibit 2; India's 1st/2nd/4th global rank in milk/egg/meat; the 12.77% CAGR and Agri-GVA/GVA shares) — DAHD, Basic Animal Husbandry Statistics 2025, dated 18 November 2025 (dahd.gov.in), read directly from the report's Chapter III graphs and accompanying text.

About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.