>> Friends of mine had a mixed farm south of Hereford, with about 30 cattle and 100 sheep. >>They used to count them every night > I'd love to know their method of counting them. Were they able to stand on > higher ground and count them as they were comparatively stationery or did > they drive them, one by one, through a narrow gate? Were these animals > grazed on enclosed fields or on moorland? > Audrey > When I stayed with them, my friends used to walk amongst them and separate the counted from the uncounted - as far as I recall. It was a 60-acre farm on a hillside, with paddocks. With practice, one could become quite accurate, I expect. I would think this way of counting would be "traditional", and farmers in all ages would have done it. Driving animals through gates would require driving them back through at the end, to get them back in the right paddock! Practice can make perfect. My Dad grazed sheep in Australia, and when it was time to sell some (300 or so at a time) we boys would persuade them down a "race" (narrow corridor) at the sorting yards while Dad stood at the other end. He swung a wooden gate with one hand to separate those being sold and those not, and counted with the other. All the men did this, and they were accurate almost always. After driving the sheep to the transport-place, they were counted onto the train just to double-check. Gordon