I know hobbits must have had pigs and chickens, because Bilbo Baggins served ham, bacon, eggs, and cold chicken to the dwarves when he first met them in An Unexpected Party.
But hobbits are little people, the great majority of which can't ride horses, but only ponies. Did they raise anything like cows, goats, or sheep? An average hobbit wouldn't even reach the height of a cow, I think.
What animals did they raise on their numerous farms/homesteads?
There is one specific mention of owning cows, which is the fictional innkeeper in the song Frodo sings at Bree, which is a song that it's implied Bilbo would frequently sing in the Shire, implying perhaps that it applies equally well to Hobbit owned inns.
Then in desperation he began a ridiculous song that Bilbo had been rather fond of (and indeed rather proud of, for he had made up the words himself)...
They also keep a hornéd cow as proud as any queen;
But music turns her head like ale,
And makes her wave her tufted tail and dance upon the green.
The Lord of the Rings - Book I Chapter 9 - "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony"
There are also mentions of products that can be derived from cows, such as butter, cheese, milk, bones, fat and cream. These can also be derived from other animals though, and so they are given their own category below.
There are some references to food products that would specifically only apply to pigs. In one of these cases, the bacon is listed as an example of Hobbit "farmhouse fare", implying that it was raised there, not just imported from out of the Shire.
There was beer in plenty, and a mighty dish of mushrooms and bacon, besides much other solid farmhouse fare. The dogs lay by the fire and gnawed rinds and cracked bones.
The Lord of the Rings - Book I Chapter 4 - "A Shortcut to Mushrooms"
“And pork-pie and salad,” said Bombur.
The Hobbit - Chapter 1 - "An Unexpected Party"
He did not go much further, but sat down on the cold floor and gave himself up to complete miserableness, for a long while. He thought of himself frying bacon and eggs in his own kitchen at home—for he could feel inside that it was high time for some meal or other; but that only made him miserabler.
The Hobbit - Chapter 5 - "Riddles in the Dark"
There is one specific reference to (cold) chicken, and one reference to domesticated fowls being kept in yards, but there are also many references to Hobbits eating eggs (such as the "bacon and eggs" references given elsewhere).
“Put on a few eggs, there’s a good fellow!” Gandalf called after him, as the hobbit stumped off to the pantries. “And just bring out the cold chicken and pickles!”
The Hobbit - Chapter 1 - "An Unexpected Party"
Soon after six o’clock the five hobbits were ready to start. Fatty Bolger was still yawning. They stole quietly out of the house. Merry went in front leading a laden pony, and took his way along a path that went through a spinney behind the house, and then cut across several fields. The leaves of trees were glistening, and every twig was dripping; the grass was grey with cold dew. Everything was still, and far-away noises seemed near and clear: fowls chattering in a yard, someone closing a door of a distant house.
The Lord of the Rings - Book I Chapter 6 - "The Old Forest"
Bilbo and Gollum are also both familiar enough with eggs to have it as an answer to a riddle.
A box without hinges, key, or lid,
Yet golden treasure inside is hid,he [Bilbo] asked to gain time, until he could think of a really hard one. This he thought a dreadfully easy chestnut, though he had not asked it in the usual words.
... But suddenly Gollum remembered thieving from nests long ago, and sitting under the river bank teaching his grandmother, teaching his grandmother to suck—“Eggses!” he hissed. “Eggses it is!”
The Hobbit - Chapter 5 - "Riddles in the Dark"
As discussed above there are multiple references to animal products, such as butter, cheese, milk, bones, fat and cream. Many of these can be derived from several different types of animals, including cows, but also from animals that are not listed above, such goats and sheep.
A big jug of coffee had just been set in the hearth, the seed-cakes were gone, and the dwarves were starting on a round of buttered scones, when there came—a loud knock. ...
“What’s that? Tea! No thank you! A little red wine, I think for me.”
“And for me,” said Thorin.
“And raspberry jam and apple-tart,” said Bifur.
“And mince-pies and cheese,” said Bofur. ...Cut the cloth and tread on the fat!
Pour the milk on the pantry floor!
Leave the bones on the bedroom mat!
Splash the wine on every door!
The Hobbit - Chapter 1 - "An Unexpected Party"
So he sat himself down with his back to a tree, and not for the last time fell to thinking of his far-distant hobbit-hole with its beautiful pantries. He was deep in thoughts of bacon and eggs and toast and butter when he felt something touch him.
The Hobbit - Chapter 8 - "Flies and Spiders"
The fruit was so plentiful that young hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream; and later they sat on the lawns under the plum-trees and ate, until they had made piles of stones like small pyramids or the heaped skulls of a conqueror, and then they moved on.
The Lord of the Rings - Book VI Chapter 9 - "The Grey Havens"
While probably not considered livestock, we have a very specific example of a Hobbit owning dogs, which is more direct than can be said about just owning food products (which could perhaps have been traded for).
‘What’s wrong with old Maggot?’ asked Pippin. ‘He’s a good friend to all the Brandybucks. Of course he’s a terror to trespassers, and keeps ferocious dogs – but after all, folk down here are near the border and have to be more on their guard.’
The Lord of the Rings - Book I Chapter 4 - "A Short Cut to Mushrooms"
The inn in Bilbo and Frodo's song has a cat a dog.
The ostler has a tipsy cat that plays a five-stringed fiddle;
And up and down he runs his bow, Now squeaking high, now purring low, now sawing in the middle.The landlord keeps a little dog that is mighty fond of jokes; When there’s good cheer among the guests,
He cocks an ear at all the jests and laughs until he chokes.
The Lord of the Rings - Book I Chapter 9 - "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony"
And there are references to Hobbits owning ponies.
When they had finished, the farmer and his sons went out with a lantern and got the waggon ready. It was dark in the yard, when the guests came out. They threw their packs on board and climbed in. The farmer sat in the driving-seat, and whipped up his two stout ponies. His wife stood in the light of the open door.
The Lord of the Rings - Book I Chapter 4 - "A Short Cut to Mushrooms"
‘The answer to the second question,’ said Merry, ‘is that we could get off in an hour. I have prepared practically everything. There are five ponies in a stable across the fields; stores and tackle are all packed, except for a few extra clothes, and the perishable food.’
The Lord of the Rings - Book I Chapter 5 - "A Conspiracy Unmasked"
CGCampbell's comment on the size of farm animals is very astute. Let's take a look at some real-world species that might be raised by hobbits, who we shall assume to be 63% the height of a human (average hobbit height is 3'6", average human is 5' 6.5").
The Vechur cow is 124cm long, compared to the Friesian's 240cm length, or 51% the length.
Juliana pigs can grow to 10-16" tall, compared to 20”-38” for a standard domestic pig, or less than 50% the height.
Chickens are, I think, sufficiently covered by other, smaller breeds of bird; also I suspect they are small enough that hobbits would be able to rear them as-is, being sufficiently stout-of-heart to face the waist-high dinosaur-kin.
There is (only?) one indirect reference to animal husbandry, in the Prologue, which states that the Shirriffs were
more concerned with the strayings of beasts than of people.
I assume this refers to livestock of some kind wandering off one farm and onto public lands or other private lands, rather than the movements of wild animals.
Aside from direct evidence, I don't think there is any difficulty inferring that Hobbits might have kept smaller livestock (even cows that were either not bred to be larger, or bred to be smaller, than typical cattle today) to account for various foods eaten by Hobbits. (See the other answers for more details; I don't encroach on what they've already covered.)
Seems unclear. Sarjeant (2001) has dug through to find as much information as they could, but they seem to be extrapolating from food in the same way that you did ... the section on "Its [The Shire's] Pastoral Farming" briefly discusses ponies, bees, dogs, pigs ("we cannot be sure that there were pigs; bacon can be made from mutton also"), sheep, goats ...
Were there cattle? Well, since the hobbits consumed yellow cream, milk, butter and cheese (I, pp. 58, 135; III, p. 303), this may seem likely ... One might imagine such cattle to be of a small breed, like the Shire's ponies. However, their presence in the Shire is by no means certain; all those products could have been made from the milk of goats or even sheep.
The mention of 'fowls chattering in a yard' at Crickhollow (I. p. 120) could refer to any domesticated egg laying bird; it is highly unlikely that the hobbits kept hens, since those birds were confined to distant tropical lands until relatively modern times. Instead the hobbits might have eaten eggs of quails, plovers or some other bird, harvested in the wild, or conceivably of ducks, wild or tame.
(Sarjeant seems to have missed the food (ham [always from pigs AFAIK], "cold chicken and pickles", etc.) in "An Unexpected Party"? Maybe we could have an argument about translations from Westron to English??)
Sarjeant, William A.S. 2001. “The Shire: Its Bounds, Food and Farming.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society, no. 39: 33–37. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45320598
https://journals.tolkiensociety.org/mallorn/article/download/139/133
It is rather illogical to assume that Hobbits raise pigs, or cattle, merely because Hobbits in the shire may eat meat and other products from those animals.
It would be more reasonable for humans in Bree to raise cattle and pigs, and sell meat and other products from them to hobbits in Bree, and then someone in Bree thought of exporting pig and cattle products to rich hobbits in the shire like Bilbo.
Bilbo owns a number of products which were not invented until a few centuries ago, despite Hobbits having a low technology, and there are examples of plants found only in the new world in historic eras.
So my guess is that Dwarves travelling through the Shire often buy food and pay for staying in Hobbit run inns. And rich Hobbits like Bilbo and his ancestors buy technologically advanced products from Dwarves.
And so rich Hobbits like Bilbo could also buy specialty foods from outside the Shire. By the time of LOTR Bree is the only settlement close to the shire still inhabited, so Bilbo and other rich Hobbits could buy pork, ham, beef, milk, cream, butter & cheese from Bree.
And maybe less rich Hobbits might raise smaller livestock like sheep and goats for mutton, goat meat, goat milk, goat cheese, etc.
I remember one time when I was a child we were at a party in the country. There was a sheep chained to a stake being used as a sort of living lawnmower. The sheep pulled the chain off the stake, and I watched the home owner pull on the chain to drag the sheep back to the stake. I thought that sheep were small weak animals, until I watched the man struggle to pull the sheep closer to the stake to slip the chain back over the stake.
When I was 18 we visited the place that we moved to. And someone said to go out to the barn to see the goat. I went out to the barn expecting to see a goat, but to my surprise I saw a pony sticking its head out of the upper part of a barn door. And then I notice that the "pony" had horns. I was expecting to see a goat about 1 foot tall, instead I saw one of the largest breeds of goats.
Later, when we used the goat to graze on vegetation, I sometimes had to drag along the ground the heavy block of metal the goat was chained to when moving the goat, and it was quite heavy. Apparently that weight was necessary to keep the goat from dragging the block by itself.
As for pigs, adult pigs of various breeds usually weigh at least as much as an adult human and often several times as much. A few individual pigs are known to weigh more than a thousand pounds, and one weighed more than a ton.
Since adult Hobbits in the Shire were about three to four feet tall, even the smallest breed of miniature pigs would weigh more than the average Hobbit, and many breeds of pigs weigh ten times as much as an average Hobbit.
Here https://moviechat.org/tt2222135/Dog-with-a-Blog/64a8eca1cee4b4181179bda2/The-Pirate-Avery is a link to a post where I criticize a television episode where a girl steals a pig mascot of a rival school and, despite not being old enough to drive, transports it a decent distance, presumably leading it on a lease. And all the problems she might have with moving a large and possibly stubborn pig would be even greater for most Hobbits who were smaller than her.
Pigs can be quite dangerous. In The Wizard of Oz (1939) there is a scene where Dorothy falls into the pig pen and everyone panics and rushes to get her out as fast as possible. And that scene is considered rather realistic. Pigs have killed humans.
So I would expect that the Hobbits in the Shire don't raise cattle, and raise only the smallest breeds of sheep and goats, and possibly very small breeds of pigs.
