So my oldest - whom you oldsters might remember as Baby Kate a lifetime ago - hit me with the question in the thread title.
Essentially, she wants to know what percentage of the total number of German Shepherds - both dogs and actual German Sheepherders - are not dogs. I can’t imagine it’s a large figure.
However, she’s smart enough to send this message as a challenge to the SDMB. Can we determine the answer?
All German Shepherd Dogs (the official name) are dogs.
German Sheepherders are not dogs if they are human.
There are other sheepherding dog breeds from Germany which are not German Shepherd Dogs, which are dogs. discussion: Old German herding dogs - Wikipedia
If she’s asking us to compare the number of German Shepherd’s (the dogs) to German Shepherd’s (the humans in Germany who have a job title of “Shepherd”) then I very much suspect that the second number is zero, or close to.
“Shepherd” as a job mostly belongs to times and places where flocks of sheep wander about more or less freely and keeping track of their location and safety was in itself a full-time job. Now that we have fences, the “herding” job of looking after the flock is probably overwhelmed by the “checking for good health”, “mending fences”, “shearing”, “organising trips to the slaughterhouse” and “doing the accounts” jobs, and a person whose livelihood is the raising of sheep would probably refer to themself as generic “farmer”.
There’s also the possibility of comparing against “German humans with the NAME ‘Shepherd’” - I expect that would also be exceedingly small. Might be larger if you allow the German translation of shepherd, which GoogleTranslate tells me is “Schäfer”
Now see, from the thread title, I thought you meant how many German Shepherd dogs actually herd sheep? Which, while difficult in and of itself is still a quite reasonable question.
But then the OP makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. OP seems to be asking us to estimate the total number of human shepherds in (also from?) Germany, and add the number of German Shepherd Dogs who actually herd sheep in Germany* and then divide by the total number of German Shepherd dogs?
Well, no, not exactly. In most places where sheep are herded wolves have been wiped out. So the need for a little boy with a crook to sit and watch the sheep and yell for help if a wolf comes is next to naught. Most sheep that I’ve encountered are semi-feral. They are marked with paint and sent off to graze in large stretches of wild land for most of the year.
A couple of times per year local sheep farmers get together and herd them down for health checks, parasite dips, and so forth. Then at shearing time they are divided by mark and herded down again to be shorn.
So I guess sheep farmer = shepherd,at least a couple of times per year.
In 2010 there were 27,900 farms raising sheep in Germany.
Approximately 19% of Germans who work in agriculture are considered full-time, non-family member. For the sake of Baby Kate, we’ll assume that 20% of those farms have a full-time, non-family employee, and for the sake of coming up with a number, we’ll assume that full-time employee can be described as a “shepherd.” That would put the number at 5,580.
That compares to about 3.5 million German Shepherd Dogs in the U.S.
The classical kind of German shepherd is the migratory kind (Wanderschäfer or Hüteschäfer). Kunilou’s statistic would cover sheep farming (Koppelschäferei).
There is a professional association Bundesverband Berufsschäfer e.V. - their site has pictures on what Wanderschäferei looks like, as well as on international shepherd gatherings in Nairobi, the Carpathians and France.
According to this article, in 2010 there were 2000 Berufsschäfer in Germany but only 30 first-year apprentices (shephering is a 3-year apprenticeship in Germany, with journeymen later studying for master shepherd). That means the numbers will significantly decline.
The public interest in Wanderschäferei is that flocks of sheep keep heath areas from becoming woods, keeping the landscape that we are used to in the last few centuries. Shepherding gets public subsidies for that purpose.
I thought this would be about how many inbred German Shepherd dogs (with faults galore if not behavioral issues) there are, vs. those with solid pedigrees…
Do you also have to add sheepdogs in or of Germany that are of other breeds, such as Border Collies?
And let’s not even get into Malinois. But yeah, there are two kinds of dogs with “shepherd” in their breed name, those who move’ em around and those who watch over 'em, and of course, there are breeds that do either with no mention of sheep or shepherd in their name at all.
OK, this shit is getting complicated. As I see it, we begin with this equation.
German Shepard Dogs / Germans who herd sheep
Fine. However, we’ve got some further definitions.
Worldwide population of German Shepard Dogs(breed) / (Germans who herd sheep(which can include all sheep farmers given the info above))+(Germans with the last name ‘Shafer’)+(Other dog breeds in Germany which herd sheep)
Is this even answerable?
Should the number of human German Shepherds include Germans living abroad? Shepherds in America or Australia, say, that are of German heritage? Should only first-generation immigrants be counted, or anyone of German decent? Only sheepherders named Shepherd/Schäfer? Do alt spellings such as Shaeffer count? How about German nationals named Schäfer that do not heard sheep?
We cannot find the answer if the parameters are not defined!
