Idaho sheep and lamb death loss
USDA NASS Quick Stats annual Idaho sheep and lamb death loss and January 1 inventory, joined to NASS's irregular Idaho cause-of-death surveys (2016, 2018, 2023, 2025), which are funded by the Idaho Animal Damage Control Board and split losses between predator and non-predator causes.
Publisher
- Organization
- USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
- Publisher’s dataset
- Idaho Sheep and Lamb Death Loss and Cause of Death Surveys
- File or API used
- https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/api/api_GET/
- Retrieval script
scripts/fetch-nass-sheep-death-loss.py- Methodology
- https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/
Coverage
- Geography
- Idaho
- Time coverage
- 1988-2025 (annual totals); 2016, 2018, 2023, 2025 (cause surveys)
- Update frequency
- Annual (Quick Stats totals); irregular, at intervals of several years (cause surveys)
- Published
- 2026
- Retrieved
- September 8, 2026
- License
- The compiled file on this page is CC BY 4.0. The underlying records: Public domain. U.S. federal government work; USDA NASS survey data are not subject to copyright.
Measures
| Measure | What it measures | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Sheep and lamb deaths | Sheep (excluding lambs) plus lambs lost to all causes in the calendar year, after docking, as NASS Quick Stats publishes it. | head |
| Sheep and lamb inventory, January 1 | Sheep and lambs on hand January 1 of the year, from NASS Quick Stats. | head |
| Sheep and lamb deaths per 1,000 head | Total sheep and lamb deaths that year per 1,000 head of January 1 inventory. Computed here from the two Quick Stats series, not a published NASS figure, so the death toll can be read against a flock that has changed size. | per 1000 |
| Sheep and lamb death loss by cause | Sheep and lamb deaths (including lambs lost before docking) attributed to each cause, exactly as NASS names it in the Idaho cause-of-death survey for that year. Published only for survey years 2016, 2018, 2023 and 2025. | head |
| Value of sheep and lamb death loss by cause | Dollar value of sheep and lamb losses attributed to each cause, as published by the NASS Idaho cause-of-death survey (the source reports thousands of dollars; this is that figure multiplied by 1,000). Published only for survey years 2016, 2018, 2023 and 2025. | usd |
Caveats
- The annual series and the cause surveys count different things and must not be compared directly. agriculture.sheep_lamb_deaths (Quick Stats) counts lamb deaths after docking only; the cause surveys also count lambs lost before docking, so a survey year's total runs higher than the same year's annual figure. In 2025 the annual series reports 15,000 deaths and the survey reports 22,000; both are correct on their own definition and the difference is not a revision.
- The cause surveys are irregular, not annual. Only four Idaho years are published: 2016, 2018, 2023 and 2025. Nothing between those years should be presented as a continuous cause series.
- Wolves are a separate agriculture.sheep_death_loss_by_cause category in 2016, 2018 and 2023 and are not in 2025, where NASS folds them into 'Other/Unknown Predators' with bobcats. The 2025 observation for that category carries a note; its absence as a separate 2025 row is a reporting change, not a fall to zero.
- The predator share of the cause surveys is a floor, not a measurement: NASS states that 'Unknown Causes', which is 25.5 percent of all 2025 deaths, 'may include some predator loss'.
- NASS rounds each cause to the nearest 100 and does not force the column to add ('Totals may not add due to rounding'). In 2023 the published cause rows fall 200 head short of the survey's own published total and $2,000 over it in value; 2025 carries a $1,000 value residual. These residuals are NASS's rounding, not a parse error, and are not represented as their own category because NASS does not name one; they are recorded here rather than in the data.
- Idaho cause-of-death data for years before 2016 exists inside the national NASS Sheep and Goats Death Loss reports and is not pulled by this dataset; those reports are fixed-width text in a different layout from the Idaho state releases.
- Status is recorded as 'estimate' for the Quick Stats annual series, which NASS can revise, and 'final' for the cause-survey figures, which are published as closed final reports (the 2025 source file is literally named '..._FINAL.pdf').
Pages built on this dataset
Downloads
How to cite
Understand Idaho, “Idaho Sheep and Lamb Death Loss and Cause of Death Surveys”, compiled from USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Idaho Sheep and Lamb Death Loss and Cause of Death Surveys. Retrieved September 8, 2026. https://understandidaho.com/data/nass-sheep-death-loss/. CC BY 4.0.
Cite USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service directly for the figures themselves.
This page was last updated .