The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: horsemadmummy on April 30, 2012, 08:28:09 am
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Strange question but as we have three dogs hubby is reluctant to get me another and my little flock is growing!!! question we have a very biddable weimaraner bitch who refuses to carry anything in her mouth (so hubby plan of hunting dog failed) she seems highly trainable so I wondered if she might be able to be trained to help move the sheep.
She doesn't seem to want to eat them when I take her into the paddock so thought we might give it a go but I have no idea where to start.
Are there any training courses that I could send her on to begin with or is this wishful thinking?
Any replies/advice appreciated as I dont want to waste time/money or stress the sheep
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There is a good section on sheepdog training in - can't think of book name but have a look at the signature link on the bottom of VSS posts it should say there.
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Hiya - good artcle in Coutry smallholding magazine this month which advocates dogless shepherding for smallholders, which I am surprised to say has worked really well for me. I was a bit worried when I first got them how I would manage them without a dog - but that bit has been easy (using the faithful bucket with a few nuts in it)!!! Only thing I cant do is separate one off - for me its all in, then get the one I need. But with only 8 acres of pasture and 18 sheep thats no bother. They will even follow the bucket through greener fields, across streams, through gates. Good luck, Fi
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Over the years we have tried, not very hard, to train our various German Shepherds to round up our flock. We've never had much success, they all do the same thing. Instead of gathering up the sheep into a nice bunch, they run straight into the middle, split them up and then take off after one of them.
It was easier to train the sheep to go where we wanted them!
I agree with FiB, a bucket works wonders.
Sharon
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OK, this is really embarrassing but ours come to name ;D well sort of name, I shout "Nimble, Tallulah ....Boyyyyyyyyyyys....!" really loudly and all 5 come legging it over to the hurdled off area containing a trough which then gets some handfuls of nuts in.
Friends and neighbours take the mickey but it means I don't have to walk for 10 minutes to find them and the noise of my voice (in suitably shrill animal calling tone) bounces off the hill in front and behind me ;)
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Bucket has worked well with my Soay so far. They are flighty little things but will come running as soon as they hear me call, even from a couple of paddocks away.
Have occasionally sat my retriever and told him to stay so that sheep avoid him and it helps to guide them to where I want them. Otherwise he is pretty useless! Ignores the sheep completely ..... would a gundog have the instinct to round the sheep ? Not sure if you can teach that ???
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Bucket has always worked well for us. ;D
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Another vote here for the bucket :thumbsup:. Mine only have to see me carrying anything that remotely resembles a bucket and all come haring over, even the Herdwick who is very flighty and wary. You do sometimes get the odd one or two who don't go where you want them but usually if there's two of you it's easy enough to round them up (having said that last year I had one particular contrary lamb who wouldn't follow the others and managed to persuade a few to go off with him! I spent quite some time running over five acres trying to head them off lol!).
I have two Australian Cattle Dogs who love nothing better than to chase sheep/horses but not to where you want them so they stay firmly shut indoors during any herding procedures ;D
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thanks for replies looks like its a no to that idea then! and I do hate having anything at home that does nothing to pay for its keep! i might just put her on a training line and see if it looks like she might have a chance she has got the away command and you only have to put a finger up and she sits! no harm in taking a look. would even be prepared to send her to a kennels for an intial week if I could find someone.
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Before I got my collie (which I didnt even bother to train) I used a lurcher to do 2 useful things. One was to sit and stay in a spot to cover an escape route and the other was to chase any sheep that broke away from the flock and scare them enough to want to return so that I could carry on herding them. As far as rounding sheep up in the true sense he was (and still is) absolutely clueless. The collie just does it naturally and now the sheep know where to go so its all stress free.
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that sounds like a plan then lets see if she will sit and stay while sheep are moving around her it would be so helpful if she could just be my other pair of hands as i am on my own where sheep are concerned.
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thanks for replies looks like its a no to that idea then! and I do hate having anything at home that does nothing to pay for its keep! i might just put her on a training line and see if it looks like she might have a chance she has got the away command and you only have to put a finger up and she sits! no harm in taking a look. would even be prepared to send her to a kennels for an intial week if I could find someone.
I wouldn't cast the idea out - my young Brittany and I went on a fun day for our breed to my friends' sheep farm in the borders, and Malcolm said he'd take any into the field who wanted to test their dogs on sheep. When I took Bobby in his ears went up and I was sure he was going to chase them, but Malcolm took the lead off me and let him go. The sheep scattered as they would with a strange dog - and Bobby started to run - I was yelling at him, but Malcolm told me to shut up and watch - he was rounding them up. Any stragglers he took a wide berth and when they headed into the bunch he stopped stock still. I couldn't believe my eyes. However, we needed him to respect sheep rather than herd him so Malcolm did some aversion training techniques instead. But he certainly uses a couple of his own Brittanys to herd the sheep - these are HPRs same as your Weimaraner. Have a go, and good luck.
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the boarders are a long way from here does malcom train dogs? it seems to me newbie dog and newbie handler might be disaster which is why i was thinking if i could find a trainer so she could get the basics that would work better. problem is how do you find a trainer?
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I have used my springer as a stop when trying to shift sheep. Put her in the sit and she turned the sheep.
As an aside, I'm helping a friend train his weimaraner who won't retrieve. Started off trying to get her to retrieve but she is such a sensitive/nervous dog, we are just working on her hunting and confidence issues. He's now got a working cocker which I'm helping, and I have to say a LOT easier than the weim! lol. Still, she's teaching me a LOT about training dogs.
Helen
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weis are more human than us. more willful than a naughty child but once they are yours they are yours for life. she loves to be outside which is why i want to give her the chance to work in some way
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We use our Jack Russell to bring in the flock. He's not perfect but he does help. In the past we have used a German Shepherd and an Irish WolfhoundxAnatolian Karabash. Apart from the GS, those are not typical sheepdogs and we don't use them in quite the same way. The GS responded well to ordinary words such as 'go round', 'bring them back' and so on, but we never tried 'come bye' and so on, or a whistle.
So it's been a case of learning what the dog can do then adapting how we bring in the sheep to that.
With the Jack Russell, as soon as he knows it's time to round up some sheep, he starts to make a yipping noise - it's very annoying but we have noticed that as soon as he sounds off the sheep know they have to be rounded up, they kind of submit and instead of running off in all directions (as primitives can do ::)) they start to head in the right direction. We usually use him between the two of us, so he runs back and forth between us, not letting any sheep through the invisible line he makes. He can also be used by one though and will run round in the direction we indicate. Sometimes he's an idiot and cuts the flock in half, but then we just start again.
We do use the bucket method to move the flock from field to field, but as soon as our sheep know we want to catch them they tend to b###r off, hence the usefulness of a dog - they seem to respect him, in spite of how small he is, far more than they do us. They know they can run rings round us on our own ;D
For most of the time, ie when we are not rounding up the sheep, the JR wanders around amongst them and is on excellent terms with them. The GS used to ask them politely to move, and the giant wolfie cross just used to stand there creating a blockage, or go up to the group we wanted, especially the Soays, then we would call her back and they would follow her :thumbsup:
So what I'm trying to say is that if you are using a dog which is not typically a sheep dog then how you use it would be different. Rather than sending her off to be trained by someone else, it would be better for you both to learn together so you can work together in a way which suits you, your dog and your flock. It doesn't happen overnight either.
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isnt that why we have children? we have been known to use the kids and most of the time they do listen! We have a black lab who is too proud to walk behind the sheep but likes to sit on the back of the quad with the humans and supervise!!!!
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weis are more human than us. more willful than a naughty child but once they are yours they are yours for life. she loves to be outside which is why i want to give her the chance to work in some way
Ok - will try to help.
Malcolm doesn't train anyone else's dogs, he takes the Brits shooting, but as they have sheep and some of the dogs seemed to herd rather than chase, plus he didn't want any chasing sheep while out shooting, he trained his own dogs accordingly.
A weim is like any other HPR - Brits aren't particularly known for their retrieving skills either - all of mine will go out for one or maybe two dummies - if sent out for a third they acknowledge on their way past it to go off hunting ::)
BUT, they all retrieve anything that used to be alive - rabbits, birds of any size or shape - whether just shot or a zillion years old. ::) Some of the stuff I have to take willingly is just disgusting - but you MUST take it. It is their gift to you. ;D
In training an HPR you must encourage it to go running far - they hunt well outwith gun range(50 yards or so, mine will range 300 plus yards - can be a bit scary at first :o), but that should help with collecting your sheep. First of all, you must train the instant recall (although with HPRs if they are on point or on a hot trail they will only recall when that has been suitably comopleted to their sdatisfaction ;)) You must also train the stop - usually on the whistle - you need that if the dog is going too far or coming in too fast. A turn command would be useful too for obvious reasons.
I use a 211.5 whistle, and one beep means sit, two beeps means turn, 3 beeps means come back in. A long hard blast means 'whatever you are doing get your bum on the floor NOW'
Hope that helps, if you want her to retrieve though, try a tennis ball or a dummy covered in rabbit skin - or wing feathers from a pheasant - and make a big fun happy noisy game of it when she even just sniffs or touches the retrieve article.
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isnt that why we have children?
:thumbsup:
and copious rattling of buckets and shouts of "girls" (even to the boys).
Didn't stop me getting a BC puppy, however! ;)
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isnt that why we have children?
The trouble with children is they grow up and move away then you're left on your own with the same problem but now you're old and creaky ::) ;D
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i have 5 children and they are useless they can often be seen being herded by the geese! its the funny farm here :D
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Some breeds will naturally take to it better. Other breeds tend to be too manic and aggressive.
It depends what you want to do. I borrowed a friend and her black lab to help bring some sheep in and the lab did a great job. She ran between my friend and I and stayed put when told to do so. She really was helpful and had no specific sheep training.
I'd go for something you know you can train well enough to rely on not to do anything silly when with your sheep. Even being able to 'hold' the sheep while you open a gate or grab a ewe, is very helpful.
If you want to turn up at the field, let the dog go and just open the gate when the dog brings them back then you probably need a specialist ;-)
Good luck and enjoy.
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I used to move a 150 head flock by bucket! Its quite easy. Problems with using dogs is that they want/need to work a lot, not just the few times a month/year etc you want them to. Also if you have primitives they tend to scatter in the face of a dog rather than flock....hence they are never used on one man and his dog :D :D
If I want to catch specific sheep I find catching the whole lot and then getting hold of the one I want far less stressful than trying to catch one!
There is another downside to involving dogs with sheep.....if they are allowed to 'chase' yours they tend to think they can 'chase' anyones...freelance collies are a menace near here!
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Ahhhhh ..... thats it Woollyval!
Was reading these posts and wondering why my Flat- coat was so useless. Only any good at sitting and staying and hence blocking a sheepy escape route and brilliant at one thing ..... emptying the woodstore. ::)
Its not his fault ........ its those Soay!!!!!
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Problems with using dogs is that they want/need to work a lot, not just the few times a month/year etc you want them to. Also if you have primitives they tend to scatter in the face of a dog rather than flock....hence they are never used on one man and his dog :D :D
Not entirely true. Might be with collies, never had any myself. Most working gundogs I know are worked only from early October to end January - only trained for short periods in summer. My three will go for a quick half hour run, a longer two hour one, a 10 minute training session, four hour working morning, a whole day shooting, or just zonk in front of the fire (or under my feet at the computer as they are now) - whatever I decide to do with them.
Sheep will scatter from a dog they don't know and bunch if they trust the dog (known to them) So I was told anyway, and it looked that way when Malcolm was testing the other Brittanys that day. They mostly bunched when Bobby went right out to the end of the field and pushed them towards us, and scattered a little as tehy moved, then he went to teh side to push them back in. He'd never been near a sheep befofe except when we had the wee orphan last year and he played at play bumps with that one. ::)
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Some really good tips on this thread. :thumbsup: Please don't give up on your Wmr - a nice biddable bitch should be able to help you no end with the sheep; you just need to work out how you can work as a team. And FW is quite right that you need to learn together - said with feeling as a retired working dog trainer ::) ::) :wave:
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We once went to look at some sheep at a large farm in Wiltshire and the dogs the chap used to gather them up was a collie cross spaniel and a staffordshire bull terrier! both those dogs worked brilliantly and although they didn't pen the sheep they both did an outrun to get them and then held them in a corner of the field for us to look the sheep over.
My collie wasn't up to their standard, fab