Kip the Sheepdog

Kip the Sheepdog Kip's training from puppy to working sheepdog on Humble Shack Farm.

Kip says “Don’t forget to stock up for winter with square hay bales from Humble Shack Farm!”
11/06/2025

Kip says “Don’t forget to stock up for winter with square hay bales from Humble Shack Farm!”

Kip’s happy face 😊
10/20/2025

Kip’s happy face 😊

Just have to wait for the sun to go down and then it’s time for a walk and lessons with the sheep.
10/16/2025

Just have to wait for the sun to go down and then it’s time for a walk and lessons with the sheep.

Sheep chores with Kip 🙂 It takes a team to care for this many ewes. When it’s not Kip’s turn to help, he’s either runnni...
10/13/2025

Sheep chores with Kip 🙂
It takes a team to care for this many ewes. When it’s not Kip’s turn to help, he’s either runnning an empty pasture for fun or laying at my feet.

The sheep have been split into two flocks. The expecting mommas will start getting hay and grain to supplement their grazing.

There’s not as much grass growth this month but we were able to put up plenty of hay and everyone is fat-and-happy from the summer grass.

The younger ewes and our older ewe won’t need grain until later when the grass is gone for the fall/winter. Kip will have herding lessons with them now and we will definitely enjoy the cooler evenings.

A foggy evening with Kip and the Sheep. We’re a few weeks out from Lambing season! 😊🐑 The ewes all get extra attention a...
10/08/2025

A foggy evening with Kip and the Sheep. We’re a few weeks out from Lambing season! 😊🐑

The ewes all get extra attention at this stage - hoof trims, calcium, vitamin and selenium supplements to prevent deficiencies and pregnancy toxemia.

We’ve had to learn which things our soil/grass and water are deficient in so we can support the ewes and lambs best.

And bit later they’ll get some grain and hay to keep up their energy and encourage a good milk supply for the lambs. For now they’re keeping fat and happy on the last of the summer grass.

Kip’s job tonight was mostly supervision and making sure everyone came in from pasture. And then taking them back out to fresh pasture again.

Beautiful last bit of the sunset tonight while working the sheep with Kip.
10/01/2025

Beautiful last bit of the sunset tonight while working the sheep with Kip.

09/23/2025

Down and back. Practicing taking the sheep through the fence and bringing them back. 🐑🐕 Working both directions is important.

This combines flanking, wearing (the side to side movement to keep the sheep together), and droving.
Droving is when dog and handler move the sheep to a point from behind. The other option is Driving - where just the dog moves the sheep to a location. Or a Gather, specifically bringing the sheep to the handler: our next goal!

It’s all small-scale and close teamwork but that’s perfect for our farm. Don’t miss Kip jumping for his bite of egg once we get the sheep moved 😅

We took some videos tonight but I won’t know if they’re any good until I go through them 🙃 so in the meantime here’s a p...
09/20/2025

We took some videos tonight but I won’t know if they’re any good until I go through them 🙃 so in the meantime here’s a picture from moving the sheep and keeping them in the gate while we moved their shade into the pasture too.

I realized I hadn’t posted anything in a while. Kip is still being a good boy and has had a variety of tasks around the ...
09/18/2025

I realized I hadn’t posted anything in a while. Kip is still being a good boy and has had a variety of tasks around the farm to help with. 😄

We’re currently trying to figure out the next lesson with the sheep from our herding book. When we have some idea of what we’re doing out there I’ll take the camera out again 😅

Kip has done a lot of work driving the sheep from behind. 🐑🐕🚶🏼‍♀️Now it’s time for him to learn to get out there on his own and bring them to us. 🚶‍♀️‍➡️🐑🐕

Playing in the hay field tonight. It will all be baled tomorrow, but Kip had to get in some fun jumping over the piles f...
08/28/2025

Playing in the hay field tonight. It will all be baled tomorrow, but Kip had to get in some fun jumping over the piles first. 😃

No videos today, but Kip has been practicing daily. He’s been a big help bringing in the new ewe lambs every night for t...
08/18/2025

No videos today, but Kip has been practicing daily. He’s been a big help bringing in the new ewe lambs every night for their grain. They just haven’t decided to come in on their own yet, but they need the feed so it’s important they come in for it.

He also helped move all the flocks around twice. It’s his job to get everyone moving the right direction and keep them together. 🐑

Matching look - just wet 💦😅 the grass is waist high and soaked with rain or dew most days so we both come back soaked too.

08/07/2025

Last night after helping with the lambs we practiced moving a larger flock through the gate, using a whistle, and keeping the sheep off me.

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Wilmer, AL

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