Typical live weights by region, species, system, and cohort.
Source
The shipped values are unsourced placeholders, but the real GLEAM
table has been located (whep#881): FAO. 2018. Global Livestock
Environmental Assessment Model, Model description, Version 2.0,
Revision 5. Rome, FAO, Supplement S1, "Live weights (kg)" block of
Tables 2.4 (dairy cattle), 2.5 (beef cattle), 2.6 (feedlot cattle),
2.7 (buffaloes), 2.10 (sheep), 2.11 (goats) and 2.14-2.16 (backyard,
intermediate and industrial pigs), workbook
https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/gleam/docs/GLEAM_2.0_Supplement_S1.xlsx
(md5 72fd2ea477dfe8b30cd3657b2baa4af1, retrieved 2026-08-26). The
Version 3.0 description drops those regional herd-parameter tables, which
is why the committed GLEAM 3.0 Supplement S1 workbook has no sheet for
them.
The shipped values do not match that source and have not been
replaced here, because doing so is a science decision that moves
published numbers: .join_weights() in R/livestock_energy.R uses this
table as the Tier 2 live weight, and gross energy scales as
weight^0.75 for maintenance and weight for activity. Measured per
cohort against the GLEAM values (system-averaged the way
.join_weights() averages them), gross energy – hence Tier 2 enteric
CH4 – would move by: Global cattle adult female 400 -> 457 kg, +6.9%;
Global cattle fattening 300 -> 399 kg, +14.2%; Western Europe cattle
adult male 1000 -> 732 kg, -16.4%; North America cattle adult female
615 -> 700 kg, +7.3%; Global sheep adult female 45 -> 53 kg, +7.2%.
GLEAM also publishes no live weight for the Replacement cohorts (its
herd module derives them), so a re-ingest cannot remove every assumption.
Separately, the "Latin America" rows are unreachable: .gleam_region_of()
emits GLEAM 3.0 region labels, in which that region is
"Central & South America", so those rows silently take the Global
weights.
Examples
gleam_animal_weights
#> # A tibble: 32 × 5
#> region species system cohort weight_kg
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl>
#> 1 Western Europe Cattle Dairy Adult Female 650
#> 2 Western Europe Cattle Dairy Adult Male 1000
#> 3 Western Europe Cattle Beef Adult Female 600
#> 4 Western Europe Cattle Beef Fattening 400
#> 5 North America Cattle Dairy Adult Female 680
#> 6 North America Cattle Dairy Adult Male 1000
#> 7 North America Cattle Beef Adult Female 550
#> 8 North America Cattle Beef Fattening 450
#> 9 Sub-Saharan Africa Cattle All Adult Female 250
#> 10 Sub-Saharan Africa Cattle All Adult Male 350
#> # ℹ 22 more rows