The cattle sector is the most important economic production unit of the Irish farming and agri-food sector. Despite its relevance, there has been limited quantitative information about the structure of differing cattle production types and of the connections between them. This paper addresses this gap by providing, for the first time, an overview of the Irish cattle population structured by enterprise type. We collected data from the cattle register for the period 2015 to 2019 and assigned registered herds to one of 18 different herd types using a recently published herd type classification approach. This allows, for the first time, to exploring changes in enterprise types and subtypes over time, and describing the movements between these subtypes and from these subtypes to slaughter. The overview and associated classification presented in this study will form the basis for a number of future comparative studies, including cross-sectoral assessments of profitability, estimation of the extent of animal health losses on Irish cattle farms or structural analysis of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions across production systems.

中文翻译：

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按企业类型划分的爱尔兰牛群：概述、贸易和趋势

养牛业是爱尔兰农业和农业食品部门最重要的经济生产单位。尽管具有相关性，但关于不同牛生产类型的结构以及它们之间的联系的定量信息有限。本文通过首次概述按企业类型构建的爱尔兰牛群来解决这一差距。我们从牛登记处收集了 2015 年至 2019 年期间的数据，并使用最近发布的牛群类型分类方法将登记的牛群分配到 18 种不同的牛群类型之一。这首次允许探索企业类型和子类型随时间的变化，并描述这些子类型之间以及从这些子类型到屠宰的移动。