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by masklinn 3857 days ago
In absolute numbers that's not even remotely true. According to FAOSTAT the undisputed top 1 is mainland China (175M) followed by Australia (75M), India (64M), Sudan (52M) and Iran (50M). New Zealand is down to 31M heads and it's been falling pretty much continually since the 1999 uptick to 46M heads.

NZ may have the highest number of sheep per capita and highest sheep density (especially since FAOSTAT doesn't list Wales independently)

2 comments

If we consider Wales separately then I think it would beat NZ on density.

A quick search suggests 8.9M sheep in Wales[1], around 430s/km^2 , NZ is only about 120s/km^2.

Per capita though NZ beats Wales, and probably any other country.

[1] http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/sheep-lamb-popu...

Seeing that they use google streetview I think we need a metric of sheep per road kilometer.
That's remarkably close but NZ edges it. I make it about: Wales: 250s/km NZ: 330s/km
I did say a very weak link. :-)