Livestock density describes the density of livestock units (LU) per hectare utilised agricultural area (UAA). Livestock unit is a reference unit to faciliate the aggregation of livestock from various species, using livestock unit coefficients. One LU equals a grazing cow producing 3.000 kg milk per year without feeding additional concentrated foodstuff (Eurostat 2018).

Data are available for the main categories cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry and equidea, on the NUTS 2-level (Eurostat 2018). Data are reported from Member States to Eurostat.

On the national or regional level, livestock density can be derived from data on livestock censuses. Estimates in high resolution can be obtained from processing data of different origin, as shown with the Thuenen-Atlas for Germany (Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institute, 2018).

On a small scale, livestock density can be collected from farm surveys.