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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Herding

Herd \Herd\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Herded; p. pr. & vb. n. Herding.] [See 2d Herd.]

  1. To unite or associate in a herd; to feed or run together, or in company; as, sheep herd on many hills.

  2. To associate; to ally one's self with, or place one's self among, a group or company.

    I'll herd among his friends, and seem One of the number.
    --Addison.

  3. To act as a herdsman or a shepherd. [Scot.]

Wiktionary
herding

n. 1 An act by which individuals are herded. 2 A hirsel. vb. (present participle of herd English)

WordNet
herding

adj. (of birds and animals) tending to move or live together in groups or colonies of the same kind; "ants are social insects"; "the herding instinct in sheep or cattle"; "swarming behavior in bees" [syn: herding(a), swarming(a), social]

Wikipedia
Herding

Herding is the act of bringing individual animals together into a group ( herd), maintaining the group, and moving the group from place to place—or any combination of those. Herding can refer either to the process of animals forming herds in the wild, or to human intervention forming herds for some purpose. While the layperson uses the term "herding" to describe this human intervention, most individuals involved in the process term it mustering, "working stock", or droving.

Some animals instinctively gather together as a herd. A group of animals fleeing a predator will demonstrate herd behavior for protection; while some predators, such as wolves and dogs have instinctive herding abilities derived from primitive hunting instincts. Instincts in herding dogs and trainability can be measured at noncompetitive herding tests. Dogs exhibiting basic herding instincts can be trained to aid in herding and to compete in herding and stock dog trials. Sperm whales have also been observed teaming up to herd prey in a coordinated feeding behavior.

Herding is used in agriculture to manage domesticated animals. Herding can be performed by people or trained animals such as herding dogs that control the movement of livestock under the direction of a person. The people whose occupation it is to herd or control animals often have herd added to the name of the animal they are herding to describe their occupation ( shepherd, goatherd, cowherd). A competitive sport has developed in some countries where the combined skill of man and herding dog is tested and judged in a Trial such as a Sheepdog trial. Animals such as sheep, camel, yak, and goats are mostly reared. They provide milk, meat and other products to the herders and their families.

Usage examples of "herding".

Australia is the sole continent where, in modern times, all native peoples still lived without any of the hallmarks of so-called civilization—without farming, herding, metal, bows and arrows, substantial buildings, settled villages, writing, chiefdoms, or states.

So the settlers had devised a method of herding the snakes, making certain by a variety of means that few escaped to wreak havoc among the herds and flocks.

For all their admonitions about the dangers involved in the Hunt, it looked like there was nothing more to herding snakes than quick reflexes and concentration.

In a little while, the servos returned to view, herding before them a pair of globe-frogs.

Most of the dragonriders were put to herding the livestock toward the harbor.

Some twenty meters below him he saw four people, Jiro and the three youngest mounted on Earth-type horses, herding a variety of four-legged domestic beasts through a huge aperture in the cliff.

Falloner grinned a response as he started herding some of the younger ones ahead of him towards the inner staircase.

If these louts would do more hunting instead of herding, we'd not take yours from you.

F'lon announced and began herding them all out of the crowd and towards the Gather tables set around the dance square.

Jayge wondered if maybe he and Tino should try to round up the animals he had been herding along the track.

The Weyrhold had a complement of holders, herding and experimenting with grain crops and vegetables in areas which had once, clearly, been fields, walled by stones set in place centuries before.

While Aboriginal Australians and many Native Americans remained hunter-gatherers, most of Eurasia and much of the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa gradually developed agriculture, herding, metallurgy, and complex political organization.

Chapter 4 sketches how food production—that is, the growing of food by agriculture or herding, instead of the hunting and gathering of wild foods—ultimately led to the immediate factors permitting Pizarro's triumph.

For instance, neither farming nor herding developed in prehistoric times in North America's Arctic, while the sole element of food production to arise in Eurasia's Arctic was reindeer herding.

Instead, what cries out for explanation is the failure of food production to appear, until modern times, in some ecologically very suitable areas that are among the world's richest centers of agriculture and herding today.