Stray dogs in Kerala, 2026: 2,89,986 counted in 2019 and 9 lakh by the department's own estimate, 3.69 lakh dog bites and 33 rabies deaths in 2025, three times the deaths of 2021, 15 sterilisation centres for a state that has barred its own Kudumbashree units since 2021, the best vet-to-livestock ratio of any large state, and a mobile unit for every block on order

Stray dogs in Kerala: the state's numbers on one page

Kerala publishes its bites and deaths by district and does not know how many dogs it has within a factor of three. Sixteen rows, from twelve sources.

Two rows carry the weight. Kerala's rabies deaths tripled from 11 in 2021 to 33 in 2025 while its bites rose from 1.35 lakh in 2017 to 3.69 lakh Onmanorama, 'Over 100% increase in stray…, and the state's department thinks it has three times the stray dogs the census counted. The rest of this report is about a state with the vets to fix this and a programme that has been in court since 2021.

How many stray dogs Kerala has: 2.9 lakh in the census, 6 lakh by Kudumbashree, 9 lakh by the department

Kerala is the one state whose own government has said, in public, that the census is a third of the truth.

Kerala had 2,89,986 stray dogs in the 20th Livestock Census of 2019, 7.8 percent more than the 2,68,994 of 2012, and 8.3 dogs for every 1,000 people, below the national 11.5 National Commission on Population; in 2012, 13.2 percent were counted in urban areas and the rest in rural ones, and the 2019 census recorded 3,629 stray cattle, among the fewest of any state. The Animal Husbandry department's own data, reported in November 2025, put the state's street dogs at about 9 lakh, and Kudumbashree's programme page says that 'the stray dog population in Kerala as per 2012 census is 2.99 lakhs' and that 'it is estimated that the number of stray dogs is approximately 6 lakhs as of now'. Bonbeno's street dog report explains why a household-enumerator census under-reads, and Kerala is its clearest case: the department's estimate is 3.1 times the census and the census is the number Parliament is given. The 21st Livestock Census had published no state stray dog table by 2 November 2026, and neither the 6 lakh nor the 9 lakh comes with a method.

Dog bites and rabies: 3.69 lakh bites and 33 deaths in 2025, a death count that tripled, and the districts that carry it

Kerala publishes the series other states do not. It shows deaths rising faster than bites.

'3.69 lakh people were bitten by stray dogs in 2025 in Kerala', by the Local Self-Government Department's five-year figures, 15.02 lakh over 2021 to 2025, and 'the number of deaths in 2021 was 11, which increased to 33 in 2025', 122 over the five years; the assembly records a year earlier had shown 3.16 lakh bites and 26 deaths in 2024 against about 1.35 lakh and 8 in 2017, 'over 100%' more bites and a three-fold rise in deaths in seven years. The IDSP table laid before the Lok Sabha gives Kerala 4,000 bites in 2022, 71,606 in 2023, 1,15,046 in 2024 and 11,649 in January 2025, with 0, 1 and 3 suspected rabies deaths, so that the national table's 2024 figure is 36 percent of the state's and its death count a ninth; the 2022 figure of 4,000, the lowest for any large state, is what a state looks like before its facilities report into the system, and the 2,776 percent rise to 2024 is the reporting arriving, not the dogs. Even on the IDSP's figure Kerala recorded 320 bites per lakh people in 2024, above the national 266, and on the state's own it recorded about 880, above Tamil Nadu's 623. Bonbeno's dog bite report prints the IDSP series for every state.

The districts: Thiruvananthapuram's 2.26 lakh bites, Kollam's 21 deaths

Thiruvananthapuram district recorded the most bites over the five years, 2.26 lakh, then Kollam at 1.72 lakh and Palakkad at 1.55 lakh, with Kottayam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam and Thrissur each above a lakh and Wayanad the fewest at 33,527; Kollam had the most rabies deaths at 21, Thiruvananthapuram and Alappuzha 17 each, Palakkad 14, Thrissur 12 and Wayanad none. The capital district's five-year total is close to two-thirds of the whole state's census dog count, which is the arithmetic behind the department's 9 lakh. The ICMR estimate for India is 5,726 rabies deaths a year against the 54 the surveillance table recorded in 2024; Kerala, at 33 deaths in a state of 3.6 crore people, records rabies more completely than any state in this series and still, by that estimate, not completely.

The Animal Birth Control programme: 15 centres, 900 Kudumbashree units barred by a court since 2021, mobile units for 152 blocks, Rs 300 a dog, and euthanasia with a certificate

Kerala built the largest sterilisation network in India through Kudumbashree and then lost the right to use it. The 2025 plan is to drive the surgery to the dog.

The state government runs 15 Animal Birth Control centres and has identified sites for five more, and its local bodies allotted Rs 47.6 crore in 2024-25 for dog vaccination, the ABC programme and the Rabies Free Kerala project, the assembly was told in February 2025. The reason a state of 941 local bodies has 15 centres is in Kudumbashree's own programme page: under the Kerala High Court's order in WP(C) No. 13204 of 2021, dated 17 December 2021, and the Animal Husbandry department's order of 27 December 2021, 'Kudumbashree units are restrained from carrying out Animal Birth Control procedures throughout the state' pending further orders; the Local Self-Government Minister, M B Rajesh, said in July 2025 that Kudumbashree had set up around 900 ABC centres before court rulings under the Rules halted them. The Rules require a recognised organisation with a certificate of project recognition, veterinary staff and a facility of a specified standard, which the women's self-help units were not.

The July 2025 plan: portable centres, Rs 300 a dog, 158 catchers, euthanasia and microchips

On 16 July 2025 the minister announced 'mobile portable Animal Birth Control (ABC) centres in 152 blocks', each costing Rs 28 lakh and 'expected to be operational within two months of order placement', with a pilot in Nedumangad; Rs 300 paid for each dog captured for sterilisation; 158 dog catchers trained by the Animal Husbandry department with more to be recruited through Kudumbashree; an extensive vaccination drive for stray dogs in August and a camp to vaccinate and license pet dogs in September; that 'seriously ill or endangered dogs may be euthanised with veterinary certification'; and that dogs would be chipped with a 12-digit ID carrying their address, vaccination status and licence. In November 2025 the Local Self-Government Department opened a state call centre, 0471 2773100, for 'complaints and difficulties related to stray dog issues' between 10 am and 5 pm. Whether the 152 units were delivered, how many dogs they have sterilised and whether the September licensing camp ran had not been reported in any document read by 2 November 2026; the one measure the plan gives is Rs 28 lakh times 152, about Rs 42.6 crore, which is what Pune's corporation spends on its programme in a year.

What the Centre pays and what the Supreme Court ordered

The Animal Welfare Board of India released no ABC grant to any state in 2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24 or 2024-25; from 2025-26 the revised scheme offers Rs 800 per dog and Rs 600 per cat to bodies that follow the Rules, which is the same Rs 800 the state now pays its catchers and its centres together. The Supreme Court's order of 22 August 2025 restored release after sterilisation for healthy dogs, confined feeding to designated spots in each ward and impleaded every state; its order of 7 November 2025 told every local body to fence schools, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands and railway stations and move dogs found there to shelters after sterilisation and vaccination; and on 19 May 2026 it upheld those directions. Kerala's euthanasia decision of July 2025 sits inside the Rules, which allow a veterinarian to put down an incurably ill or mortally wounded dog, and outside them for anything else.

Veterinary care: 5,395 registered vets, 539 livestock each, 2.8 percent of posts vacant, and 15 vets per lakh people

Kerala's government veterinary network is the best staffed in India by every ratio the replies allow.

Kerala had 5,395 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024, up from 4,622 in 2021, and only 46 of its 1,637 sanctioned government veterinary doctor posts were vacant in December 2025, 2.8 percent against 25.8 percent for India. Its 1,164 government institutions are 279 veterinary hospitals and polyclinics, 870 dispensaries and 15 aid centres, and its 29 operational mobile veterinary units cover 1.0 per lakh livestock, the central norm. With 29,08,657 livestock in the 2019 census, the state has 539 livestock per registered vet against India's 6,106, the best ratio of any state and third of the 35 states and territories behind only Puducherry and Goa, 2,499 per government institution against 7,906, and 15.0 vets per lakh people against 6.3, the most of any state with more than a crore of people, which is where Bonbeno's Vet Access Index places it; its two recognised veterinary colleges have 225 approved seats. A state with a vet for every 539 animals and a death count that tripled is a state whose problem is not veterinary capacity. Bonbeno's vet directories cover eight cities, none of them in Kerala, so this report has no private clinic layer for Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram or Kozhikode; what a consultation, a vaccination or a surgery costs anywhere in India is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India.

Pets and the rules: a licence from the panchayat, a camp that was promised, pet shops without a register, and nowhere to cremate

Kerala's pet rules run through 941 local bodies, and the state has said it will tighten them.

Kerala's pet dogs are licensed by its panchayats and municipalities, and the state's July 2025 plan promised a September camp to vaccinate and license them and a 12-digit microchip for each; no state-wide fee, fine or count has been read, and the camp's outcome has not been reported. The licence, where it exists, is the record on which a bite by a pet is traced, and Kerala's own 2025 deaths included at least one from a pet's bite reported elsewhere in the country's press that this report could not read and so does not count. Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India covers the portals that exist, and its guide to pets in apartments in India reads the Animal Welfare Board of India's guideline that residents' associations work under. The Rules require a State Board certificate for every shop that sells an animal and every breeder; the Board's circular of December 2023 recorded that no state had provided its number of registered establishments, and Kerala has published none. Bonbeno's pet shops report carries the Rules clause by clause and the one state register that exists, Tamil Nadu's.

Native breeds and end of life: none, and none

No dog breed named for Kerala is on ICAR's register of six Indian breeds or on the standard list of twenty, and the dog most of the state shares a road with is the Indian pariah dog; Bonbeno's report on the register carries the six, three of them from Tamil Nadu across the ghats. No municipal pet crematorium in Kerala could be read; the nearest facilities in Bonbeno's cremation report are Chennai's free Kannammapet unit and Bengaluru's Sumanahalli, and its guide to when your pet dies in India covers burial, which in Kerala is the option.

What a Kerala pet owner can do with these numbers

Seven things that follow from the record, in the order an owner meets them.

1. License the dog with your panchayat or municipality and keep the vaccination record. The state promised a camp and a microchip in 2025; the local body is where the licence lives until then.
2. Vaccinate against rabies on schedule and treat every bite as urgent. Kerala recorded 33 rabies deaths in 2025 and 3.69 lakh bites; the vaccine course must be completed.
3. Report the dog, not the neighbour. The state call centre, 0471 2773100, takes stray dog complaints from 10 am to 5 pm; a lane of unsterilised adult dogs is the fact to give it.
4. Know which order applies to your building. Institutional premises are fenced and cleared to shelters under the 7 November 2025 order; a residential road gets its sterilised dogs back under rule 11(19).
5. Ask your block about the mobile unit. 152 were announced at Rs 28 lakh each with a two-month delivery promise in July 2025; whether yours arrived is a question the panchayat can answer.
6. Buy an animal only from a shop or breeder that can show its State Board certificate. No register exists; the pet shops report lists what to ask.
7. Plan for burial. No municipal crematorium in the state could be read; Bonbeno's guide covers the steps.

What this data does not measure

Each figure here was produced by a different office for a different purpose, and the gaps are specific.

• The dog count is three numbers and no survey. The census, the department's 9 lakh and Kudumbashree's 6 lakh are seven years, a data note and an undated page apart, and none has a published method; the 21st Livestock Census had published no state table by 2 November 2026.
• The state's bite series and the IDSP's are different instruments. The state counts through its local bodies and health system; the IDSP counts what reporting public facilities send up, and its Kerala row only began to fill in 2023. The dataset carries both and computes nothing across them.
• The 2021 to 2023 state bite figures were not read; the five-year total of 15.02 lakh is published, the years inside it only partly.
• The July 2025 plan's delivery is unverified. No document read says how many of the 152 units were ordered or delivered, how many dogs they sterilised, or whether the September licensing camp ran.
• Kudumbashree's 900 units are the minister's figure, and the court order's text was not read; the restraint is as the programme page states it.
• The district totals are five-year sums, so a district's trend cannot be read from them.
• No private clinic layer, no licence count, no pet shop register and no crematorium exist here, and pet spending per household is not here because the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey's unit-level data had not been obtained.

How this report was built

Every figure was read from the document cited, and the state rows are the same rows Bonbeno's national reports computed from the parliamentary annexes.

1. The census figures are from the Rajya Sabha statement of 6 August 2025 and Table 79 of the 19th Livestock Census, with per-1,000 rates from the National Commission on Population's projections; the state estimates from Onmanorama of 9 November 2025 and Kudumbashree's programme page.
2. The bite and rabies figures are from Onmanorama of 3 February 2025, Kerala Kaumudi of 3 February 2026 and Annexure I and II to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025; the national estimate from the WHO India page.
3. The programme, plan and order figures are from Onmanorama, Kudumbashree, South First of 17 July 2025, the Local Self-Government Department's notice of 29 November 2025, the Lok Sabha reply of 2 December 2025, the PIB release of 19 August 2025, the Animal Birth Control Rules as gazetted, the Supreme Court's orders of 22 August and 7 November 2025 as published Supreme Court of India and News On AIR of 19 May 2026.
4. The veterinary figures are from the Lok Sabha replies of 2 December 2025, 11 February 2025 and 28 March 2023 Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 1287 Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 4449, the Rajya Sabha annexure on data.gov.in and the Veterinary Council of India's college list.
5. The pet shop and rules figures are from the Pet Shop Rules and the AWBI circular. The People Also Ask questions were captured on 2 November 2026 through an Apify run of Google's India results for 'stray dog problem in kerala', the phrasing the ranking pages use.