Comment by Bamberg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bamberg | Hacker News Reader

How Iceland Football National Team Was Selected: Total inhabitants = 332,529

Women ....................................... -165,259

Men <18 years old ........................... -40,546

Overweight .................................. -22,136

Busy in whale sightseeing industry........... -1,246

Busy in earthquake surveillance.............. -314

Busy in volcano surveillance................. -164

Busy as sheepherders......................... -1,934

Busy sheep shearing.......................... -1,464

Imprisoned bankers........................... -23

Blind........................................ -194

Sick......................................... -7,564

Working in hospitals, police, fire brigade... -564

Icelandic fans in stadium.................... -8,781

Team doctor and physiotherapist.............. -2

Teams massage therapist and water carrier.... -2

Busy managing national football team......... -7

Rest......................................... 23

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/4psdbh/how_the_icel...

(The coach is from Sweden)

You missed the punch line!

As an aside, obviously, those numbers are obviously cherry-picked, but they appear to be mostly selected based on facts. You can find some census figures in this booklet: http://www.statice.is/media/49863/icelandinfigures2016.pdf (The booklet says that of 111k men, 2.6% (or about 2900) are involved in the sum of all non-aquatic agricultural activities; I couldn't find precise details on sheep farming.) Nonetheless, I'm particularly curious about the listed ratio of sheepherders (shepherds?) to sheep shearers, at 1,934 vs. 1,464

The numbers seem to imply that sheep shearing takes 75% as long as sheep herding. I imagined that one sheep shearer would have sufficient capacity to service a large number of shepherds. Each sheep is typically sheared once per year, and it might take two or three minutes per sheep. But the shepherd must manage the sheep year round. Even with modern automated feeding equipment, farm tractors, and, of course, the requisite sheepdogs, I can't imagine that one shepherd could generate nearly enough sheep to keep a shearer busy for 9 months per year. Even assuming the shearer requires 5 minutes per sheep and only does shearing 30 hours per week for 4 weeks per month, that's 13,000 sheep per shepherd.

The same answer illuminates a couple things about our industries, too: If a task only needs to be performed a couple times a year, a freelancer will need many, many clients! And conversely, if you can automate or outsource day-to-day operations, you can get a lot more done than if you have to process everything manually!

Leaving aside that these numbers seem like some April Fools' gag...

    > But the shepherd must manage the sheep year round.

You're obviously just making stuff up and not familiar with how this is done in Iceland.

Sheep aren't being constantly herded around. During the winter they're inside a barn because everything is covered in snow, during the entirety of the summer they free range getting fatter, raising lambs etc. In the autumn there's a big coordinated herding event (göngur) where farmers and volunteers in an entire area coordinate to herd all the free-range sheep into pens for the winter.

So literally nobody in the country works as a full-time sheepherder. Since it's all over in a matter of days.

> You're obviously just making stuff up

I am passingly familiar with sheep and cattle management on a small farm in the US, and based my assumptions on this process.

> and not familiar with how this is done in Iceland.

That, however, is true. Your description is fascinating! So Icelandic shepherds aren't managing the sheep during the summer? No feeding, medicating, breeding, etc?

Sheep shearing is highly seasonal; you shear your sheep in autumn when they have their winter wool.

Also, sheep herders might have a relatively easy task in summer. Herding might mean letting thousands of sheep loose in the spring, and getting them back in at the end of summer, not getting your sheep in every night or spending the night with your herd to protect it from predators.

Reading http://grapevine.is/news/2015/09/05/sheep-population-of-icel..., that's what happens in Iceland, too:

"The annual gathering of the sheep for slaughter – called the smölun (“herding”) – has commenced this weekend, and will be continuing for another month"

1 in 320,000 Icelanders are Bjork

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