# The cow-tools guide

Notes kept by Sophia about the data: a profile for each of Uruguay's nineteen departments, a note for each notebook, what DICOSE is and how to read its numbers, a glossary, and a reading path for the newly curious. 38 pages, each with a markdown twin for your agent.

Each link below is a page's markdown twin; the same page for people is the URL without `index.md` (https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/). The documents are also in the graph `cow-tools-guide`, readable through the MCP endpoint https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/mcp (`get_workspace`, `read_document`, `get_wires`, `search_documents`). CC BY 4.0, credit "cow-tools, Sophia Labs"; the data keeps its own licence.

## Start here

- [Reading path](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/reading-path/index.md): Start with the national herd, end with an agent: nine notebooks, nineteen departments, one glossary.

## Notebooks

A note for each notebook, in reading order: the answer first, then the charts and how we know.

- [The national herd at a glance](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-national-herd/index.md): Uruguay's holders declared 12,265,269 cattle on 30 June 2025 (11,583,321 beef and 681,948 dairy) and 4,799,066 sheep. On 2024, cattle changed +1.05% and sheep -11.47%.
- [Cattle and sheep, department by department](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-cattle-and-sheep/index.md): Only Salto and Artigas still have more sheep than cattle by heads (53.5% and 51.9% sheep). The national flock fell 11.5% in one year, from 5,420,661 to 4,799,066: 621,595 fewer sheep.
- [Dairy country](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-dairy-country/index.md): Florida, San José, Colonia produce 68.3% of Uruguay's milk (2,298.4 million litres in 2025, +1.67% on 2024). Florida makes the most: 26.5%.
- [Breeders in the east, finishers in the west](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-herd-structure/index.md): Maldonado is the most breeding-heavy department: 71.7% of its beef herd is breeding cows and calves. Soriano leans hardest to finishing: 29.8% steers and fattening cows. The east breeds; the west finishes.
- [How hard the land is stocked](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-stocking-intensity/index.md): Uruguay carries 0.856 cattle per hectare of livestock land (12,265,269 cattle on 14.32 million ha). The densest department, San José, carries 1.67; the sparsest of the big grazing departments, Artigas, 0.65.
- [One year on, 2024 to 2025](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-year-over-year/index.md): Between the 2024 and 2025 declarations Uruguay gained 127,121 cattle (+1.05%) and lost 621,595 sheep (-11.47%), while the number of holders declaring beef cattle went from 61,561 to 59,121 (-4.0%): more cattle, fewer hands.
- [The herd ledger](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-herd-ledger/index.md): Uruguay's cattle books balance only if 2,300,543 head left the farms between the 2024 and 2025 declarations: 18.95% of the opening herd. Calves born (2,697,988) outran deaths (247,498), home slaughter (22,826) and the herd's own growth…
- [Finding other Uruguay data](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-finding-other-data/index.md): Against the 2011 census (the latest by department in the catalogue's file), Uruguay has 3.73 cattle per person. In Durazno it is 16.7; in Montevideo, 0.0021. The dataset was found by meaning in the catalogue graph, fetched from the link…
- [Ask the agent](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-ask-the-agent/index.md): Start a personal agent over the herd data from Python, with your own OpenRouter key, and check its answer against the cube.

## Departments

One profile for each of the nineteen departments: its herd, its milk, its land, its rank of nineteen, its neighbours.

- [Artigas](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-artigas/index.md): Artigas declared 742,198 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 7th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (+1.6% on 2024), 801,403 sheep, and 0.0% of the national milk.
- [Canelones](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-canelones/index.md): Canelones declared 338,601 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 17th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (-4.8% on 2024), 50,487 sheep, and 4.9% of the national milk.
- [Cerro Largo](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-cerro-largo/index.md): Cerro Largo declared 950,412 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 4th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (-0.7% on 2024), 303,495 sheep, and 0.2% of the national milk.
- [Colonia](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-colonia/index.md): Colonia declared 537,066 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 15th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (-2.6% on 2024), 38,341 sheep, and 19.2% of the national milk.
- [Durazno](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-durazno/index.md): Durazno declared 952,171 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 3rd largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (+5.8% on 2024), 290,920 sheep, and 9.2% of the national milk.
- [Flores](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-flores/index.md): Flores declared 409,429 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 16th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (+4.1% on 2024), 83,001 sheep, and 2.5% of the national milk.
- [Florida](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-florida/index.md): Florida declared 1,117,097 cattle on 30 June 2025, the largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (+2.0% on 2024), 202,434 sheep, and 26.5% of the national milk.
- [Lavalleja](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-lavalleja/index.md): Lavalleja declared 654,451 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 9th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (+1.6% on 2024), 261,086 sheep, and 0.6% of the national milk.
- [Maldonado](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-maldonado/index.md): Maldonado declared 234,191 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 18th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (+1.6% on 2024), 101,340 sheep, and 0.6% of the national milk.
- [Montevideo](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-montevideo/index.md): Montevideo declared 2,736 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 19th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (+1.4% on 2024), 2,369 sheep, and 0.0% of the national milk.
- [Paysandú](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-paysandu/index.md): Paysandú declared 801,512 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 6th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (-1.0% on 2024), 555,079 sheep, and 2.3% of the national milk.
- [Rivera](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-rivera/index.md): Rivera declared 639,917 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 10th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (+5.2% on 2024), 182,585 sheep, and 0.2% of the national milk.
- [Rocha](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-rocha/index.md): Rocha declared 682,644 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 8th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (-0.8% on 2024), 154,813 sheep, and 0.5% of the national milk.
- [Río Negro](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-rio-negro/index.md): Río Negro declared 549,369 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 13th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (-1.2% on 2024), 69,144 sheep, and 3.6% of the national milk.
- [Salto](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-salto/index.md): Salto declared 898,899 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 5th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (+5.9% on 2024), 1,032,181 sheep, and 0.9% of the national milk.
- [San José](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-san-jose/index.md): San José declared 541,254 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 14th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (-1.3% on 2024), 37,781 sheep, and 22.6% of the national milk.
- [Soriano](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-soriano/index.md): Soriano declared 567,452 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 12th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (-0.5% on 2024), 55,293 sheep, and 5.8% of the national milk.
- [Tacuarembó](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-tacuarembo/index.md): Tacuarembó declared 1,061,136 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 2nd largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (+2.6% on 2024), 398,742 sheep, and 0.2% of the national milk.
- [Treinta y Tres](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-treinta-y-tres/index.md): Treinta y Tres declared 584,734 cattle on 30 June 2025, the 11th largest herd of Uruguay's 19 departments (-4.6% on 2024), 178,572 sheep, and 0.2% of the national milk.

## The guide

What the data is, how to read it, and what to watch for before trusting a number.

- [What DICOSE is](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/what-is-dicose/index.md): Every year, everyone in Uruguay who holds livestock tells the state how many animals they hold. Not roughly. Under oath.
- [How to read the cubes](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/reading-the-cubes/index.md): The graph uruguay-cows is the DICOSE declarations of 2024 and 2025, every row of every published table, as RDF: a W3C Data Cube of observations, PROV for where each came from, SKOS for the code lists. Nothing was averaged away on the way…
- [Known caveats](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/caveats/index.md): A sworn declaration is still a declaration. MGAP publishes a limitantes conocidas (known limitations) column beside every variable, and cow-tools keeps a quality report per year; both are here, in one place, so that nobody has to discover…
- [Finding other Uruguay data](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/finding-other-uruguay-data/index.md): Cows are a beginning. Uruguay's national open-data catalogue, catalogodatos.gub.uy, lists 2,718 datasets from 70 publishers (harvested on 14 October 2026), and the graph uruguay-catalogue holds every one of them: title, description…
- [Questions with exact answers](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/questions-with-exact-answers/index.md): Each question below was asked through the MCP endpoint, of the curated tools, and each answer was checked against a sum computed directly from MGAP's CSV files by a separate program that shares no code with the tools. They agreed to the…

## Reference

The words, and how to put a question to the data.

- [Glossary: DICOSE and the cube](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/glossary-dicose/index.md): The words you need to read Uruguay's livestock declarations, and how cow-tools models them.
- [How to ask this data a question](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/how-to-ask-this-data/index.md): Connect any MCP client to https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/mcp (no account), or POST SPARQL to https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/api/sparql/query with {"graphId": "uruguay-cows", "query": …}. Wrap every pattern in GRAPH ?g { … }. An empty…

## Notebook files

The notebooks themselves, to download and run.

- [national-herd.ipynb](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/national-herd/national-herd.ipynb)
- [cattle-and-sheep.ipynb](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/cattle-and-sheep/cattle-and-sheep.ipynb)
- [dairy-country.ipynb](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/dairy-country/dairy-country.ipynb)
- [herd-structure.ipynb](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/herd-structure/herd-structure.ipynb)
- [stocking-intensity.ipynb](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/stocking-intensity.ipynb)
- [year-over-year.ipynb](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/year-over-year/year-over-year.ipynb)
- [herd-ledger.ipynb](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/herd-ledger/herd-ledger.ipynb)
- [finding-other-data.ipynb](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/finding-other-data/finding-other-data.ipynb)
- [ask-the-agent.ipynb](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/ask-the-agent/ask-the-agent.ipynb)

## Moo-vements of the Spirit

Signed-in visitors will be able to write here soon.

(https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/moo-vements-of-the-spirit/index.md)

## About the data

Each data graph’s own note about itself.

- [About this graph: uruguay-cows](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/about-uruguay-cows/index.md): uruguay-cows is Uruguay's sworn livestock declarations (DICOSE, MGAP/SNIG) for 2024 and 2025, as RDF: every published row an observation in a Data Cube, every observation traceable to its file, every file to its download on the national…
- [About this graph: uruguay-catalogue](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/about-uruguay-catalogue/index.md): uruguay-catalogue is every dataset on Uruguay's national open-data catalogue (catalogodatos.gub.uy) as it stood on 14 October 2026: 2,718 datasets, 14,426 files, 70 publishers, 22 themes, as DCAT in the named graph…