by Sarah Loten
We were offered an opportunity to graze two solar farm sites in the winter of 2024. In the dark snowy days of January, the thought of acres of lush grass and kilometers of shelter for sheep and dogs, under solar panels, seemed very appealing! Not only that, but there is also money paid for grazing our large flock, as ‘vegetation abatement specialists’. That is the job title given to the sheep, their loyal team of dogs and shepherds! It seemed like a wonderful, synchronistic idea, particularly since solar grazing allows the sheep to thrive on good pasture, the solar company doesn’t have to mow and spray to keep the solar panels free of vegetation while much electricity is produced for the grid. Of course, nothing in farming is as simple as it ‘should be’! While much good came of the project, there were also some steep learning curves and one of them was herding. Our dogs (herding and livestock) have never worked as hard as they did this summer!
Our first challenge was to get hundreds of sheep and all their lambs, all under a month old, into a triple decker livestock truck to make the short trip to the first solar site. Our flock has never left the farm for 25 years so you can imagine the challenge it was, to convince the ewes to get into a confined truck space with their suckling lambs! Our oldest Border Collie, at 9, was seriously tested. Fortunately, we also had the younger dogs to take up the slack when she ran out of steam.
We used all three dogs to gather on our 300 acres and then only one dog to gently coax the ewes and lambs from the yard to the truck. At one point,a friend brought in a Kelpie to push the sheep forward, Kelpie style, hoping
to speed things up (the trucker gets paid by the hour). Our sheep are not used to that method of herding, the barking and the active driving. The lovely and enthusiastic Kelpie was doing what he was supposed to do but
our sheep balked and froze, and the livestock guardian dogs panicked. Fun times! The ‘vegetation abatement team’ of Drover’s Way Farm did not understand why there was so much barking and activity as they had not
experienced that before. We went back to the quieter coaxing of one of our Border Collies and all went well, if not at high speed. Slowly, surely, gets them through the race!
There were ongoing herding tasks once they arrived at the solar sites, such as gathering for deworming, sorting, moving a group away from a section, loading sheep onto a trailer, etc. Our sheep grazed the two sites freely, so
the area covered was quite large (approx. 100-150 acres). We used a portable handling system that unfolds from a trailer. To work the sheep, we had to gather from sites that were separated into separate areas (all connected) and drive them into the portable gathering yard.
It is hard to picture a solar site unless you have been inside one. There is no ‘line of sight’, both shepherd and dog must operate blindly in any outrun. There is some line of sight down the individual lines (alleys) of solar panels and it is here that the dog has more of an advantage than the handler. The dogs can see and travel under the solar panels, but humans must crouch and bend in and around them if you need to move. Of course, on a hot summer day, almost all the sheep are under the solar panels, in the shade, resting or grazing. You really must trust your dog to use his or her own judgement and sense of what needs to be done.
With one dog, I went to each section (approx. 50 acres) and did an outrun. This got the sheep moving, alert, and the outer groups moving forward in the right direction. However, the sheep are spread out in long lines under all the alleys of the solar panels. They also realize how easy it is to hide and how hard it is for me to see them. Then, the intense work begins, using all the dogs in turn to do these ‘gather scoops’ (my terminology, maybe there is an official term for this?!) whereby they do little mini length wise gathers around 1-3 aisles followed by a drive forward along the main laneway where I typically walk forward, alley by alley, to spot any escapees. With a dog, I would send one alley forward at a time. Generally, the sheep would follow the increasingly gathered flock… but not always! That’s where the dog was invaluable, looking back, to collect any naysayers of the ovine world.
Eventually, we would have the sheep gathered into one central open area. We would try to time it so that the groups from the separate areas arrived at a central area all around the same time. Then, using the dogs and humans, we would get them into the small gathering yard of the portable handling system where we would proceed to move the group up the race, deworming and sorting, as needed. Sometimes we would use a dog in the small portable yard, but the pressure is already quite intense on the sheep, and they are tightly gathered. I didn’t think it was of much benefit to the dogs or the sheep (and consequently the shepherds!) to pressure the sheep too much with a dog. We would keep the dogs tied up, out of sight of the sheep. and, if needed, for a few minutes, would send one to lend a little extra pressure for a few minutes.
I am not a particularly skilled or advanced dog handler. That said, ‘needs must’ and when faced with a task, there is nothing like having a trained and willing dog to accomplish the job at hand. I have the utmost respect for our
dogs who can adapt and intelligently figure out what is needed, at the speed of a moving sheep, even if the job is not something that they have ever done before. I also have huge respect and appreciation for the skills
needed to start, develop and train these dogs so that the shepherding tasks needed on a modern sheep operation can be accomplished. Border Collies and the people who breed, train, trial and work with them, are a special breed of folks!
Every time I am out working with my dogs, in all sorts of conditions, I am grateful for the collective development and knowledge that keeps herding skills alive and well so that our dogs can do the work that they are meant to do and farmers can get the tasks done that they need to do…even if that means herding sheep on a solar farm!
