Discretely distributed patches of vegetation may cause sheep to have to decide between moving away from companions to graze better vegetation or remaining in close contact with companions. In this type of situation, sheep may have lower intakes or poorer diet quality if they have high levels of social motivation. The objective of this study was to determine if the level sociability (the tendency of individuals to be close to others when grazing in a group) would effect the distance they would be willing to move away from their companions in order to graze long (preferred) grass. Sheep were tested to determine if they would be willing to move 0 m (control), 15 m (near) or 35 m (far) away from their companions. Initially, nearest neighbour calculations were determined, which are estimates of the relative proportion of time that individuals were observed to be nearest neighbours of other sheep. Sheep that were determined to be very sociable and those that were determined to be unsociable were used in this study. The very sociable sheep tended to stay closer to the group and spend less time grazing on the long grass compared to the unsociable sheep. Unsociable sheep took more grazing bites on the long grass than the sociable sheep during the near treatment. When the trade-off between grazing or staying close was relatively small, then sociability was reflected in foraging strategy. However, other motivations, such as fear of isolation, may have affected the willingness to move away when food was further away.