herding lessons

All posts tagged herding lessons

Let’s go herding!

Posted by kenleighacres on March 29, 2010
Posted in: Border Collie, Dogs, Farm Life, Herding, Jacob Sheep, sheep, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . 3 Comments

I started herding with my Cardigan Welsh Corgi, Darby, a little over 8 years ago and have been teaching lessons off and on for almost 5 years.  My son has been watching for almost that long.  He started watching from his stroller while eating Cheerios and now he enjoys taking lessons of his own.

Kate is very willing to be his lesson dog!

These boys are the ‘herding’ sheep.  They have been trained to work nicely for the beginning dogs. 

My son loves that they follow him around 🙂

I didn’t realize how much he has learned by watching for so many years until he was working Kate last week.  He was flawless with the directional commands.  The directional commands are ‘come by’ (clockwise) and ‘away’ (counter clockwise).  They are the most challenging thing to learn when you start herding.  He is hooked and has already asked if Kate can be ‘his’ dog 🙂

This is Apache and she has been coming for lessons for a couple months. 

I love how she works…

she is mindful in her work and very respectful to her sheep.

She is beautiful to watch!

One of my pet peeves when it comes to herding is when people see the sheep as a tool or piece of equipment.   My goal when I go out to move our sheep is to do it with the least amount of pressure.  I don’t want them to be run around and I certainly don’t want to cause them stress.

I like this definition from Wikipedia – Herding is the act of bringing individual animals together into a group, maintaining the group and moving the group from place to place—or any combination of those.

It really rubs me the wrong way when someone calls and asks if they can come chase my sheep with their dog.  Chasing is NOT herding and is NOT allowed here.

My search for chasing came up with hounds chasing animals for the hunter and dogs chasing small prey animals.

Herding dogs must exhibit the stalking and chasing aspects of prey drive, but should have a strong inhibiton to prevent them from wounding stock.

So, let’s have fun and go HERDING 🙂

The Chosen Ones

Posted by kenleighacres on August 1, 2009
Posted in: Farm Life, Herding, Jacob Sheep. Tagged: , , , . 5 Comments

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These are the lucky lambs, even though they may not agree 🙂  In most jacob flocks they would be considered culls and they will never be used for breeding here, but they serve a very important purpose…

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they are used for herding lessons. 

They would normally be headed to the freezer this fall (some may still end up there) but for now they are earning their keep.  Kate helped me dog break them and they are working out great for lessons.  Dog broke sheep are accustomed to being worked by dogs and are a must have for teaching beginning dogs.  The sheep tend to stay next to the person and your focus can be on the dog and not the sheep.  Jacob sheep aren’t usually used but they have worked well for us and it gives these guys a job.  

There are a lot of criteria that a jacob sheep has to meet to be registered, plus I have certain flock goals, which means we have a lot of lambs that aren’t sold as breeding stock.  They have to have the right coloring, correct structure, good horns, nice fleece, and an acceptable temperament.    

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This guy is missing black around his one eye and his horns on the left have issues.

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This girl is a little dark in color and her side horns aren’t as strong as I would like.

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This boys major draw back is that he is a 2-horn.  There isn’t a very big market for 2-horn jacob rams, everybody likes the impressive 4-horns.  So unless there is something really special about the 2-horn boys, I wether them.  This guy’s horns took a funny dip when I wethered him and it makes him look a little silly.

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Here is another one with silly horns.  I think she actually has 6-horns with the top ones fused together.  She is also missing the black around her right eye.

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This girl was originally sold as breeding stock, but her horns started tipping forward.  I wasn’t sure how bad they would end up being, so I replaced her with another lamb.  I’ll wait to see how she looks as a yearling.

The rest are mainly 2-horn boys.  In addition to being used for herding lessons they will also provide some really nice fleeces.

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This is Teia – a blue merle australian shepherd – owned by Tammy.  She is just over a year old and is learning how to be a sheep dog.

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She has a great sense of humor…

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that I don’t think the sheep appreciate 🙂