Sheep Herding Demonstration

On our tour of the Ring of Kerry we got to see a sheep herding demonstration. The sheep farmer, Brendan, said border collies are traditionally used for herding. It takes six months to train a sheep dog over the course of 18 months. Dogs are trained starting at four months old. Brendan uses different whistles to get the dogs to perform different herding actions and each dog has his own whistle. The sheep have no natural predators in Ireland (no coyotes, wolves, bears), so the dogs really frighten them and keep them in order. Brendan told us that the number of dogs needed depends on the area the sheep are spread over, rather than how many head of sheep there are. Most sheep dogs work from 8-10 years. The price of wool is very low now, so most of the sheep we see in Ireland are raised for their meat.

The last picture shows the different breeds of sheep.