Drone footage of sheep goes viral
Drone footage of sheep herding ‘‘like schooling fish’’ on a South Island farm has people mesmerised.
The video depicting ‘‘thousands’’ of sheep being mustered into a yard by farm dogs was captured by a fulltime hunter at Rainbow Station in Marlborough last week, from about 180 metres in the air.
‘‘I thought it was pretty cool. I didn’t think that it would go viral like it did because it’s not the first bit of footage like that out there,’’ said Matthew Bircham, of Wellington.
He could not believe how well the footage had done online. The clip has been viewed more than 550,000 times on Facebook.
He said the drone footage offered a unique way of viewing the common practice of sheep herding.
Bircham said the farm dogs were herding about 3500 ewes at the farm between Blenheim and Hanmer Springs last week.
‘‘They were moving 3500 ewes into the yard so we thought we would film it and see what it looked like, sped it up and it looks like schooling fish to me,’’ he said.
Bircham was at Rainbow Station last week hunting with a couple of mates when he decided to stick the drone in the air to capture the fish-like movements.
‘‘We take it [the drone] everywhere with us ... Just for mucking around really, nothing too serious,’’ he said.
The video, posted on the NZ Farming Facebook page, had been shared more than 7000 times and had more than 650 comments.
Sarah Brown commented on the video saying she initially thought she was watching some form of modern art.
‘‘First of all I thought it was someone doing modern art using humans! Then I realised it was sheep and sheep dogs,’’ she said.
Chelsea Foote said she knew how the sheep felt leaving the Ed Sheeran concert, with the crowds of people.
New Zealand Farming founder Tyler Fifield said it was very ‘‘cool’’ seeing the sheep being herded from a different perspective.
‘‘It’s cool to be able to get that drone footage these days, show people actually what goes into it,’’ he said.
He said it indicated how much organisation went into herding sheep and farming in general.
‘‘There’s hundreds of people out there every day doing that [herding sheep]. It just shows the organisation that goes into farming. It’s cool,’’ he said.
Bircham was hunting wild pigs and deer and was heading to Kaiko¯ura for more hunting on Tuesday before heading back to Wellington later in the week.