# Keeping a horse on small acerage



## Speed Racer (Oct 21, 2009)

What are your zoning laws concerning livestock?

If you CAN keep a horse on that small of an acreage, the grass will be gone within a month, even if you only let him graze 12 hours out of the day.


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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

Speed Racer said:


> What are your zoning laws concerning livestock?
> 
> If you CAN keep a horse on that small of an acreage, the grass will be gone within a month, even if you only let him graze 12 hours out of the day.


 We have the option of fencing in more but I dont know when we can get around to it.


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## maura (Nov 21, 2009)

Check your local zoning first, of course. 

Then check out Cherry Hill's Horsekeeping on a Small Acreage from the library or buy a copy from Amazon, it will answer most of your questions. 

My general rule of thumb is that the smaller the acreage, the more labor intensive and more expensive it will be to keep horses on it. Keeping a horse in a 3/4 acre paddock may actually be more expensive that boarding at a place that has decent grass. 

You will have to pick that paddock every day, as well as muck the stall, and you'll have to have a plan for disposing of the manure. You'll also need a place to store hay, bedding and feed. 

And think about where you're going to ride - is there room for a ring or a round pen in that set up? What's the drainage like? After the grass is gone, will the footing allow to ride, or will it turn into a mud bog?


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## BigGirlsRideWarmbloods (Mar 28, 2010)

I second the Cherry Hill book it's very good despite it thinking that 5 acres is a small property. I also recommend checking out the publications by my local Conservation District. They have several good publications on mud, manure and pasture management for VERY small properties:

King Conservation District Publications
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## EllyMaysLady (Nov 16, 2012)

My horse in on about that much land now and is doing great! It definitely is a lot more labor intensive and expensive but still cheaper than boarding for me. They're right, the grass wont last long. There is zero grass in my mares field now so i give her hay sporadically throught the day and make sure she has a salt lick. I also get her out and about a lot though so she doesnt get bored in one place. Good luck, hope it works out!


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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

Would one acre be enough for one horse for grazing? We have rich soil but summer here can get dry.
We have a HUGE yard but 50% is covered by trees and buildings. We have the option of fencing the back of our yard (about 2 more acres) but Thats far to go and feed my horse every day because its in the very back. We dont have any laws for keeping animals(except elephants and lions and tigers....:wink::lol as far as I know, because almost everyone here has a few beef cattle or a few horses.


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## BigGirlsRideWarmbloods (Mar 28, 2010)

Define grazing. Do you mean for daily excersize and supplemental fiber or do you mean grazing as the primary feed source.

Yes to the former, no to the later.
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## PaintHorseMares (Apr 19, 2008)

If you always have hay available for them, you'll be fine. When the grass is short they go eat hay instead. If they don't have hay, they'll continue to eat the grass to the dirt and wind up killing it leaving you with just dirt/mud.
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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

I want to use the pasture for grazing enitrely so I guess I'll have to fence in more. How much pasture land does a horse need exactly, to live off the land? and is it ok if I have electrobraid fencing on one acre?


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## PaintHorseMares (Apr 19, 2008)

horsecrazygirl13 said:


> I want to use the pasture for grazing enitrely so I guess I'll have to fence in more. How much pasture land does a horse need exactly, to live off the land?


Typically you figure 2 acres of grass/horse.



> and is it ok if I have electrobraid fencing on one acre?


yup


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## MangoRoX87 (Oct 19, 2009)

I just think the whole thing sounds very unfair to the horse...

3/4 of an acre is TINY. I have 5 acres, and that's STILL small for 4 horses (city zoned it for 7 horses). I still have to pick manure, and I've run out of places to put it. We keep hay out, have good grass but it has to be supplemented with nitrogen and reseeded. The grass goes fast, as does the hay. Are you prepared for the winter when there will be NO grass and your horse goes through a square bale every day?

Does your horse have a buddy? Horses need companionship, and just you isn't going to quite cut it. 

I wouldn't trust electrobraid....
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## BigGirlsRideWarmbloods (Mar 28, 2010)

Depending on your horse and your location, you need 2-5 acres of well managed pasture, with pasture rotation techniques used to feed a horse without supplementing additional hay. Cavets being if you're in So-Cal of parts of Arizona or Texas with less dense & less nutritious grasses its not going to matter how much land you have if your grass sucks.

If you want to feed your horse with only the grass that grows on your property, you have to think of yourself as a "Grass Farmer" and care for the pasture as much as you do the horse that lives on it.

You have to implement rotational grazing areas, measure grass heights, harrow, aerate, dethatch, overseed and add compost and run hay reports. 

It really isn't as easy as "I have 5 acres, I guess the horse is fed. " Without proper pasture management techniques horses can strip a pasture in months, making it uninhabitable for grass growths for years upon years. 

We've all seen the farms that that do this. Pasture if shirt to no grass, mostly dirt and the only thing growing are islands of weeds. It takes at least 3 years to completely rehab a pasture once its been "desert-ified" by horses, to establish a healthy pasture, and that's 3 years of maintaining (all that work I listed above ) PLUS keeping the horses off of it (or less than 5 hours a week) durring those 3 years.

Be envious when you see lush green pastures, they are a TON of work.


You can find A TON of really really good resourses on horses, grazing and pasture rehabing resources here: King Conservation District Pastures
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## BigGirlsRideWarmbloods (Mar 28, 2010)

Ps. I should mention I have 2 horses on 1 acre. And both of my horses have 1000 sq.ft mud-free sacrifice areas, and thanks to my County conservation district help developing my farm plan, I am allowed up to 5 per acre. I wouldn't do that, but that's what my farm plan says I can support on my land due to the best practices, I've implemented.

So it's possible, but like I said, its a TON of work, and you're going to have to supplement hay at some point.
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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

MangoRoX87 said:


> I just think the whole thing sounds very unfair to the horse...
> 
> 3/4 of an acre is TINY. I have 5 acres, and that's STILL small for 4 horses (city zoned it for 7 horses). I still have to pick manure, and I've run out of places to put it. We keep hay out, have good grass but it has to be supplemented with nitrogen and reseeded. The grass goes fast, as does the hay. Are you prepared for the winter when there will be NO grass and your horse goes through a square bale every day?
> 
> ...


Why not?


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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

MangoRoX87 said:


> I just think the whole thing sounds very unfair to the horse...
> 
> 3/4 of an acre is TINY. I have 5 acres, and that's STILL small for 4 horses (city zoned it for 7 horses). I still have to pick manure, and I've run out of places to put it. We keep hay out, have good grass but it has to be supplemented with nitrogen and reseeded. The grass goes fast, as does the hay. *Are you prepared for the winter when there will be NO grass and your horse goes through a square bale every day?*
> 
> ...


Yes I have a horse and he has hay. I will fence as much pasture land as i can in summer. AND I will take care of it too. Right now he has enough room to zoom around when he feels like it and it dosnt look very small to me. He dosnt have a buddy. Maybe I will get another horse sometime....


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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

BigGirlsRideWarmbloods said:


> Depending on your horse and your location, you need 2-5 acres of well managed pasture, with pasture rotation techniques used to feed a horse without supplementing additional hay. Cavets being if you're in So-Cal of parts of Arizona or Texas with less dense & less nutritious grasses its not going to matter how much land you have if your grass sucks.
> 
> If you want to feed your horse with only the grass that grows on your property, you have to think of yourself as a "Grass Farmer" and care for the pasture as much as you do the horse that lives on it.
> 
> ...


 Thanks I'll give it a try.


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## MangoRoX87 (Oct 19, 2009)

I don't trust electrobraid because I have seen horses get brave enough to go through it. plus, the grass is always greener on the other side...
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

MangoRoX87 said:


> I don't trust electrobraid because I have seen horses get brave enough to go through it. plus, the grass is always greener on the other side...
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


 What type of fencing would you recommend?


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## SlideStop (Dec 28, 2011)

Mango, clearly you have never been to Long Island. We have 25 horses on 8 acres. There's no pasture, but I would hardly call it "unfair". They all have room to move in fairly large paddocks that they share with one or two well matched friends. I know one places who's idea of "turn out" is a 12x12 corral, well I guess that's their stall too. That or they get turn ut into a 200x100 with 10 other horses. Now that's unfair!!
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## stevenson (Sep 12, 2011)

two acres in Canada ( u are in Canada) so do you have some heavy grass growth in the spring ? Electro braid hot wire fence three to four strands should work. Be sure it is kept 'hot' . As soon as horses realize that the fence wont bite them, they will be out. Also, catching them can be a pain to put them up at night. I would only feed in the barn , if you want to keep the horse out 24-7 then feed in just one area . With hay the grass should last a little longer. If you irrigate dont let the horse out when it is wet.


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## maura (Nov 21, 2009)

Here's the thing about fencing - if your horse is happy and content, with adequate forage, water and company, you can keep him in with baling twine. If your horse is hungry, thirsty, lonely or bored, you can't keep him in with a 6' brick wall. 

This is another dimension of the horsekeeping on small acreage problem, as a general rule, the smaller the area, the better fence you need, because the horses have more incentive to break out. 

This is just my opinion and my experience, others reasonably and legimately have different opinions and experiences, but I do not trust electric and T-posts alone to keep horses in. Electric braid or electric rope on properly sunk posts, with corners braced, sure. Electric wire on stepped in or hand sunk posts? Nope - too much can go wrong. The charger can fail, power outage, branch on the fence grounding it out, deer charging through it, wet ground causing the posts to shift and lean, smart horse listening to the charger and figuring out when the current pulses, and on and on and on. Since my horses are out, unsupervised, most of the time, I needed something I could trust to keep them out of the road. I have electric on the inside perimeter of all my fences to keep the horses from leaning on the fence, and that's great. As temporary cross fencing? Yup, it's great for that too. I just don't trust it as the ONLY barrier keeping the horses out of the road. 

Just IME and IMO, I know plently of people will post that they keep their horses in electric only fence on T-posts and have successfully for years, and I'm sure that's true. I've just had way too many bad experiences to trust it.


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## PaintHorseMares (Apr 19, 2008)

maura said:


> Here's the thing about fencing - if your horse is happy and content, with adequate forage, water and company, you can keep him in with baling twine. If your horse is hungry, thirsty, lonely or bored, you can't keep him in with a 6' brick wall.


This is indeed 95% of fencing.
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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

maura said:


> Here's the thing about fencing - if your horse is happy and content, with adequate forage, water and company, you can keep him in with baling twine. If your horse is hungry, thirsty, lonely or bored, you can't keep him in with a 6' brick wall.
> 
> This is another dimension of the horsekeeping on small acreage problem, as a general rule, the smaller the area, the better fence you need, because the horses have more incentive to break out.
> 
> ...


 We dont use step in posts or other "easy-to-push-in-'n'-take-out" posts because I dont trust them either. we use 2-3" wooden posts every 20 ft (sunk two ft) and we're going to add bracing and thicker posts to the corners to make it stronger AND we' re going to fence in more land.


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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

What if they dont have a companion?


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## wausuaw (Apr 15, 2011)

A lot has to do with your climate, soil type etc. Around here (south east Texas), grass would be gone almost instantaneously. I have 3 horses on 8 acres (about 3 and a half to 4 of that is actual pasture, the rest is wooded mix, so would be about, per horse, what you are speaking of), and the grass holds its own enough to stay green and not a mud pit, but that's about it. I give free access to good round bales, go thru about 1 large bale every two weeks, and 1 of the smaller rounds in about 10 days. 

I have yet to do cross fencing (I'm not doing fencing since I might be getting an additional 10 acres next door, which will change fence plans) but I have 1 "sacrificial" area that I put the horses (about an acre) when it's good growing season, excessively wet, or excessively dry that I usually keep horses out of otherwise- that keeps the whole place from turning into Mars. We drag the open areas regularly to spread manure, etc. 

Since we have overall more room, even if its not pasture, we haven't had any particular issues with high traffic areas (and we put the bales in different spots each time). 

But, we have had very bad drought conditions. Our soil isn't terrible, but isn't great either. However, when I originally came out here (last summer) parts of it did in fact look like mars. So, we aren't starting from ideal conditions either.


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## Saddlebag (Jan 17, 2011)

Because the fence doesn't shock an animal that is standing on snow you need to run three wires or at least two, a hot and a neutral. Wire is your best bed for perimeter fencing as it doesn't succumb to wind. Ribbon, rope, braid, etc is fine for dividing a field but not for principal containment. If you wish to divide your pasture for summer rotation then a single hot line will suffice. If your land is fairly flat and the run is straight you can get away with a 50' spacing on the posts but the corners will use 5 posts, 3 posts set at 90* and two for cross braces. Mine go straight across then wire loops form an X on both sets of posts. The loops can be tightened if the wood should shrink.


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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

Saddlebag said:


> Because the fence doesn't shock an animal that is standing on snow you need to run three wires or at least two, a hot and a neutral. Wire is your best bed for perimeter fencing as it doesn't succumb to wind. Ribbon, rope, braid, etc is fine for dividing a field but not for principal containment. If you wish to divide your pasture for summer rotation then a single hot line will suffice. If your land is fairly flat and the run is straight you can get away with a 50' spacing on the posts but the corners will use 5 posts, 3 posts set at 90* and two for cross braces. Mine go straight across then wire loops form an X on both sets of posts. The loops can be tightened if the wood should shrink.


 But why couldnt you use electric rope for the perimeter?


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## horsecrazygirl13 (Jul 16, 2012)

Saddlebag said:


> *Because* *the* *fence* *doesn't* *shock* *an* *animal* *that* *is* *standing* *on* *snow* you need to run three wires or at least two, a hot and a neutral. Wire is your best bed for perimeter fencing as it doesn't succumb to wind. Ribbon, rope, braid, etc is fine for dividing a field but not for principal containment. If you wish to divide your pasture for summer rotation then a single hot line will suffice. If your land is fairly flat and the run is straight you can get away with a 50' spacing on the posts but the corners will use 5 posts, 3 posts set at 90* and two for cross braces. Mine go straight across then wire loops form an X on both sets of posts. The loops can be tightened if the wood should shrink.


 well... I know that today I got zapped by the fence, standing on snow and wearing rubber boots.


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## Koolio (Apr 7, 2010)

I use electric rope (4 strands with 2 hot) fastened to 4-5" treated wood posts as my only fence, and it works great. We have been under between 1 and 2 feet of snow since the end of October. The fence is properly grounded and the horses do get a zap if they touch the top wire accidentally even when standing on snow. They know the fence is hot and so they don't challenge it. They also have enough space to move around and avoid the fence.

I am also in Canada and have 4 horses on just under 8 acres. A good 5 acres is fenced into 2 large paddocks / pastures. I couldn't take on any more horses as I feel we are at our maximum. I feed hay from about mid October until Mid May and with careful management and some decent moisture, can rely on the pasture grasses for the remaining 4-5 months of the year. Fortunately, although our growing season is short, it is very productive being quite a ways North.

As for management, I remove manure from the pastures twice a week. (Not in the winter). We alternate between harrowing and picking it up. Spring clean-up is a huge chore as we have to pick up as much of the winter poop as we can and give everything a good thorough harrowing. This year I am due to overseed so I will need to keep my horses off one side for a bit. Next year, I will overseed the other side. I spend hours in the summer pulling weeds by hand. We also fertilize periodically and have to mow parts of the pasture a few times each summer to ensure healthy, thicker growth. This year we are building a barn and will add a small riding paddock/ sacrifice area where we can put the horses if it gets too wet to protect the grass.

It is doable to keep horses on a smaller space, but as others have mentioned, the smaller the space, the higher the maintenance. Careful planning and due diligence go a long way. A variety of fencing materials will work, but don't skimp on the structural part that holds your fence up. Also, createas much space as you absolutely can, with at least one smaller area where the grass can be killed off. You will need to have a backup plan for drought and a plan for when it is overly wet. It isn't a bad idea to have an alternate space arranged so you can get your animals off your property while you do some maintenance or even to give the land a rest. 

Good luck!


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## rascalboy (Jun 30, 2007)

I keep my horse on 3/4 of an acre. Might be less, actually. She gets 24/7 turnout, as she has too much arthritis to be locked up in a stall. (As a side note, the practice of stalling horses at night to "rest" is rather outdated. Studies have shown that horses don't actually "sleep" at night, and continue to graze at night as they do during the day. They take catnaps during the day/night, and then get their 20min of REM sleep, and they're good to go". 
I threw her into the pasture in August, and she was still pawing through the snow to get to the last of the grass in December. 
I'm in the process of learning how to maximize grass growth for this year right now, but personally, I wouldn't think you'd have an issue keeping one horse on 3/4 of an acre. You'll have to divide the pasture and rotate, and keep up with manure, but it's do-able.
My friend down the road has 6 horses (one being a draft), and she has her horses on 24/7 turnout. They're always in a good grass turnout. And she has five acres. So yeah, with management, a small acreage can work just fine.


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