French Herding Vocabulary 🐑

1 – How Do You Say Herd in French?

The French translation for a herd or a flock is “un troupeau”. Plural: des troupeaux.

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2 – French Herding Vocabulary

1. Le bétail – livestock
2. Les bêtes – the animals
3. Une brebis – a ewe
4. Un mouton – a sheep
5. Des brebis/des moutons – sheep (plural)
6. Un agneau – a lamb
7. Un bélier – a ram
8. La bergerie – the sheepyard/sheepfold
9. Un enclos – a paddock
10. Un berger, une bergère – shepherd/shepherdess
11. La tonte – the shearing (of sheep)/the fleece one it’s shorn
12. La toison – the fleece/wool (on the sheep)
13. Tondre – to shear (also to crop your hair and also to mow the lawn)
14. Une chèvre – a goat
15. Une vache – a cow
16. Un veau – a calf
17. Un vacher – cowherd/cowboy
18. Une estive = un pâturage dans les Pyrénées – the mountain pastures in the Pyrenees (where the farm animals go for the summer)
19. Paître – to graze (grazing generally, and seen from afar)
20. Brouter – to graze (the actual “eating” of the pasture)
21. Le pastoralisme – pastoralism/animal husbandary
22. Les éleveurs – breeder/livestock farmer (eg sheep)/raiser (eg cattle)
23. Élever – to breed/raise
24. Marquer le bétail – to brand the animal
25. La transhumance – the seasonal “migration” of farm animals to mountain pastures
26. Transhumer – to go to the mountains over summer (farm animals and their “carers” – not to go there on holiday!!)
27. « Oh, la vache » ! – Holy Cow!!
28. “Revenons à nos moutons” – Let’s get back on track!
    This expression dates back to the Middle Ages in French (after a line in a medieval farce called “La Farce de Maitre Pathelin” and was used in the early 1900’s in English as “Let us return to our muttons”.)