Wicklow: Shepherd Experience and Sheepdog Demonstration｜Ireland

Immerse yourself in Ireland’s rural traditions with a sheepdog demonstration in County Wicklow. Learn about the bond between shepherds and their dogs, and celebrate Ireland’s rich agricultural heritage.

Join a family that has been sheep farming in Co. Wicklow since 1960. Discover how farming has evolved from growing wheat and barley to a mixture of grassland with a cattle and sheep enterprise.

Learn about the family’s sheep farming methods, including lowland grazing and extensive hill grazing. Hear how the sheep graze for 9 months of the year in the Wicklow Mountains. They graze an area, much of which is on National Park land surrounding the picturesque Glendalough lakes. Thousands of acres on the mountain are unfenced. We will explain why our sheep remain within an area of about 3,000 acres without straying. We graze our part of the mountains alongside seven other flock owners, so we need to distinguish our sheep from the other flocks.

You can see the dogs herding the sheep in our training field. Our training field is representative of all the tasks that the dogs need to understand when they work on the mountain. These dogs are registered Border Collies. Their studbook registry was formed in 1906 and all of our dogs can be traced back to this time. We breed Border Collies and usually we will have a pup on hand that can exhibit the instinct that drives them to work sheep even at 10 or 12 weeks of age!