Many families have a house in a village where most members live and practice irrigated agriculture, and also a shepherd branch that lives a semi-nomadic live on the rangelands.

     Herders in most taqbilt-s ("tribal fractions") of the Imeghrane, and in the Masmouda family of Berber tribes to the West, practice "transhumance," in which shepherds move among permanent camps with stone corral and shelters. They take their herds up into the lush mountains in the summer, and down onto the plains in the winter.

     Herders in the Sanhaja group of tribes to the East are more truly nomadic, moving over larger areas in black goat hair tents, in pursuit of water and forrage.