Suddenly, on Wednesday afternoon in Eindhoven, hundreds of sheep are walking among shoppers. The sheep are on their way to the Groot Vlasroot nature reserve in Veldhoven to graze there. It produced remarkable images.
The sheep have already covered 26 kilometers on Wednesday afternoon when they enter the Markt in the center of Eindhoven. The sheep, from Swinkels Begrazingsbeheer, have just come from a grazing job at Het Kamerven in Helmond. “We can go by truck, or we can go on foot,” says Geert Swinkels, owner of the company StudioO40. “This time we walked. It’s good for PR.”
Because they actually don’t have to go through the center of Eindhoven at all, a more logical route is around it. “We just took a loop,” says shepherd Marnix van Rijn, who leads the 260 sheep on Wednesday afternoon. “But we also wanted to make people a little happy, and I think we succeeded.”
The company works with municipalities, nature monuments and forest management, among others. On their behalf, they take the sheep to places where the grass needs to be maintained, as an alternative to mowing.