Cherry County, Neb., is America’s top beef cow county with 184,716 cows, more than twice the number as the county with the second most, Holt County, also in Nebraska, with 92,518. Correction: Custer County was omitted from our previous list but has 90,465 beef cows and 633 operations. In reporting Census data for counties, USDA sometimes omits data if they believe it will identify individual operations. Under “beef cows,” USDA does not disclose a number for Custer County. However, USDA reports the 90,465 number under “beef cows that have calved,” a separate category. We used that number for our corrected list, now at 34 counties. A fourth Nebraska county, Lincoln, lands in the seventh spot of the Top 34 beef cow counties with 75,582 cows. Statewide, Nebraska ranks as the nation’s fourth in terms of total beef cows.
Our list of the Top 34 beef cow counties has a total of 20,687 producers with 2,253,482 cows, for an average herd size of 109 head. Together these 34 counties account for 7.7% of the nation’s 29.214 million beef cows and 3.3% of beef operations. The state with the most beef cows, Texas, lands five counties in the Top 34 beef cow counties, but only one in the top 10, Lavaca. The second largest beef cow state, Oklahoma, has three counties in the Top 34, but only one in the top 10, Osage.
Why 34 Counties?
This list of counties could have stopped at 25, but that would have ignored several counties with large cow numbers that fall just outside the 25th spot. Indeed, a total of 19 counties have between 50,000 and 60,000 beef cows, so the cutoff to make this list became 50,000 cows. South Dakota, the state with the fifth most beef cows, landed seven counties on the list of 34, with Meade the largest with 81,773 beef cows.
In addition to Oklahoma, three other states have three counties in our Top 34 – Florida, Montana and Missouri.
Three states that rank in the top 10 nationally for beef cow numbers according to the Jan. 1, 2024, Inventory report, do not have a single county in the Top 34 – Kansas, North Dakota and Kentucky.
Note: Tulare County, California, ranked in the top 10 counties in the 2017 Census, but dropped out of the top 25 counties with a 52% herd decline from 72,778 beef cows in 2017 to 34,580 beef cows in 2022. The number of operations declined from 389 to 359 (-8%).
