Since posting the “Mustering with clever dogs” post last year I have had quite a few requests for the complete footage from which that post was taken. At over 14 minutes this video demonstrates how well bred, herding dogs with natural instinct take up positions around a mob of cattle to guide them, mostly at a walk, from a paddock to a set of yards where normal husbandry procedures can be conducted. Although this is filmed handling cattle the principles are the same for all types of livestock. If you have any questions please comment at the bottom of this post.
Music
Dirt Rhodes, Hustle, Matts Blues, Porch Blues, Slow Burn, Whiskey on the Mississippi.
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
fairdinkumkelpie 
Gee David you must be hard to please!! Things going this well and still listening to “The Blues”.
I like the way that you can see the dogs “ask” the stock, like Chief does to the grey cow at around 8:35 in the clip. Pressure, Pressure then instant relief when she turns back to the mob.
Hi Grant,
We do have high expectations and the blues offer more hope than country where the wife runs off with the dead dog etc. Clever dogs can fool the untrained eye because they apply just enough pressure for the occasion. Owen Bassingthwaighte once commented: “these dogs continue to fool our livestock as well.” The end result is livestock that handle better after each muster.
I have a comment and a question. Comment – it seems to me that cattle respond a lot better to “eye” than sheep do. Question – After you cast your dogs, why did you drive down and “join them” I thought they were supposed to bring the cattle to you?
Hi Kath,
Cattle do not respond more to eye than sheep but educated livestock respond more to correctly positioned dogs/stock people than less educated livestock. Yes, those dogs could bring the cattle all of the way to the yards behind the buggy, however, I wouldn’t ask them to in this case for three reasons:
1) Under hot conditions you will get a lot more work from your dogs if you have them tracking the mob rather than forcing it.
2) With small calves at foot a forcing dog is more likely to aggravate those more protective cows which becomes detrimental to the objective of stress free movement.
3) I have a much better view of my mob from the back and can assist by providing some motorized force without upsetting the herd.
Do you think that the muster would have been more successful if the dogs had “brought the cattle to me”?
Cheers
David
Thanks for a wonderful movie with talented dogs that have nice animals feel and really know what to do. Can I share it on Facebook to my friends?
Greetings from Ewa and I’m from Sweden
I own Karmala Mulga “Birk”
Thanks Ewa, of course you can share the video with your friends. We are considering coming to Holland and Finland in September for 2 Clinics so perhaps we can catchup then.
https://fairdinkumkelpie.wordpress.com/schoolsclinics/
I enjoyed watching this 🙂
Thanks T
Good bit of filming!!!
I must have had a good film crew that week.