But bizarrely as the size of the herd has gone down, the size of individual steers has gone up.

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The Al-Rafiqs plan to double the size of their herd, to 1, 000 goats, by 2010.

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Despite introducing efficiencies and increasing the size of his herd to about 150 cows, Mr Downes said many of the costs he and fellow farmers faced were out of their control.

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McClung is trying to boost the size of his emu herd, which now totals 5, 000 birds, each good for two gallons of oil.

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In South Africa the size of your car and your herd of cattle is what seems to count.

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He also raved about Beijing art duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's life-size sculptures of dinosaurs and rhinoceroses, which stood, like a scattered herd, in several fair booths.

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Today, a herd of takins lives within a refuge at the edge of Thimpu, the sleepy capital of a country the size of Switzerland with a total population of just 700, 000.

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