When you hear the term ‘Kerry cowboy’, you imagine some type of conman, not a 21-year-old Irish-speaking farmer who trains sheepdog puppies and uses his social media platform to promote the Irish language and agriculture!

The KerryCowboy has become a household name on TikTok, with almost 150,000 followers from all over the world.

The Irish Farmers Journal managed to get a quick interview with the busy content creator, who is also studying Irish and business teaching in Mary Immaculate College, Thurles, as well as working on his home farm where his family milk 80 cows, rear store lambs and keep horses.

TikTok

“The TikTok was my sister’s idea at first. I used to make Snapchat videos, small jokes and things around the farm.

"She was telling me about this app where you can put up videos and people can watch them.

“That’s how it kind of started off. I put up a video then of a pup I was training and it went viral altogether, it went all over the world.

"Then I started getting questions and it just grew really fast, it was mad!”

Although the Cowboy was late to the TikTok party in one sense, it did not take him long to grow his platform.

Almost 150,000 followers

“I didn’t start my account until July - I was late to the party in one sense - TikTok was well into swing.

"The content I create is mostly about the dog, the cows or horses, which is another big one.

"I also make a lot of videos based on the Irish language, so I was surprised at those videos. They do well here in Ireland, but also in America, Canada and Australia.

"There is fierce demand for videos about the Irish language and culture - it was a surprising one for me.”

The Irish language

“I have a strong enough background in Irish. My mother is from an area where there is a lot of Irish speakers, so I started off there and I did well in school and worked some jobs which required me to speak Irish, that really brought me on.

"I have a lot of friends that I would only ever speak Irish to.”

Training his sheepdog pup

Although he is an avid Gaeilgoir, the Kerrycowboy explains he does not train his sheepdog pup in Irish, as it may lead to complications in the future.

“I am training my dog Braindí in English. The reason for that is, first of all when she was young I thought I would sell her on, so you would have to have her speak English so people all over the country could work her.

"Also if I am training another dog off her in the future, I would have to have the commands in English - they say it’s harder to sell a dog that is trained in Irish.”

A good way with animals

“We have always had dogs here. I wouldn’t say any of them were any good at being trained, but I always had a good rapport with animals.

"I felt like I could communicate with them, so that’s how it started. I just figured with the lockdown, I spent years running after sheep because we never had a good sheepdog, I said when my neighbours dog had pups I would try my hand at training one.

“I was lucky Braindí was a clever pup, she has caught on to what I was teaching her.

"She is rare enough in the fact that she can work sheep and cattle very effectively, they are usually one or the other.

"She is very handy for penning sheep or bringing up cows for milking - she has mastered those two jobs.

“Down the line, I think I will breed her. She has such potential I think it would be a shame not to carry on those genes, we will see in a few years how it goes.”

Pros and cons of social media

“There are pros and cons with social media. At the moment on TikTok, I am nearly at 150k followers and on Instagram I have over 10,000.

"There are pros - you get a lot of support and it’s good to give people around the world an insight into Irish agriculture; you would be amazed how interested they are at how we do things here.

“But you will definitely face negative feedback also. There are a lot of people out there who are against agriculture, you can get a lot of negative comments.

"You would just want the qualities as a person to just brush that off and take no notice.

"You would want to be fairly toughed skinned to put up content online about farming, but the positive comments definitely outweigh the negative ones.”

To see what the Kerrcowboy gets up to on his farm, you can follow him on Instagram or TikTok @kerrycowboy.