Friday, August 5, 2016

Morning Herding

This one gets to be about Zen!


A few days ago I built a new y-chute at the entrance/exit of our "front pasture". We have been keeping the lambs up there overnight and letting them out during the day to graze. When we need to corral them up for worming or inspections, weighing, etc they get super suspicious and do not want to cooperate. So, my idea was, build a semi-permanent y-chute to the entrance exit of the field, then run them in and out of it every day so they get used to it. Then, when we need to look at them or grab one of them, we just corral them in there, do the quick and dirty, and let them out, just like normal. So I built it, and they followed a grain bucket into the field, then the next day I go to let them out, and they could not figure out how to get out. By evening time when it was time for them to get put up none of them had ever figured out how to get out.... (what the heck?!?! They are normally escape artists)


I told Travis to just leave them in and lock them up and Zen and I would use it as a challenge to try to show them they could in fact, run through the y-chute in the other direction.


So yesterday morning, I go out and open the gate to give them free access to the rest of the property, and Zen and I go in with intentions of bringing them out. This field is much bigger than the two practice fields I have been working Zen in, so I knew it'd be a bit of a challenge. The sheep were in the back corner (If I was guessing, a two acre field, with lots of trees, and a creek). They were up on a hill, so I feel like Zen had a decent visual of them when I sent him, and he did fairly well, needed some initial correcting on staying out wide, but I figured he would. Staying wide in a small field is important, and staying wide in a larger field is even more important. We spent some time on that, just getting him to "out" while moving, and taking flanks while he was already moving. Also, tightened up some on his "there" commands. He's (mostly) checking up and changing pace now when I give the "there" command, instead of having to stop him every time. I'm also noticing, he doesn't always feel the need to bring the sheep to me, which is great. So I can send him, tell him "there" and have him turn in, slow up, and walk the sheep in a line from that point. We worked those sheep for probably 30 minutes. Not hard, obviously, the sheep had the advantage in that large field. They only ran if they wanted to. Every time Zen had control of the group we were walking them. He got to cover a few times, and I still want him to push out a little more on his cover, but over all I was really impressed that he seems to know his job is to get to the head and turn the whole group, no just single one out. So we would drive the sheep to the front, and my goal was to just walk them down the fence line and then push them through the chute, but that never happened. They would get to the opening of the chute and then take off, so those were the times Zen had to cover, then that would open up the other side, and they'd dart that way, and he'd cover, and we'd be in the same position again. I tried walking in front of them, like a fetch, same thing. They'd follow me for a bit, then see the chute and thought "not going through there", so while we never accomplished the goal, I still felt he did some awesome work out there. All of the elements are coming together. Since I was wanting the task done, but went out there to train, I was pretty much focused on making sure Zen was right, so if his flank was a little flat, or tight, we fixed it. Even if the sheep left and I had to send him again. I am glad for the training we got done.

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