The bad news is that Irish litter numbers continued to fall for the first half of the year. The slightly better news is that the rate of decline has slowed slightly.
The Irish Coursing Club registered 1,134 litters for the first half of 2018, a fall of 66 litters, or 5.5% on the same period in 2017. That compares with a near 11% decline for the whole of 2017. Jan-June matings are also down by an almost identical percentage.
At the current rate, the final year total should be around 2,300 litters which means they will have more than halved in 16 years from the 4,827 litters whelped in 2013.
