Agricultural land

[Loveponies]

Could I have some advice and opinions please.
I have the opportunity to buy 6 acres of agricultural land a short distance from my house. It does have a covenant that says agricultural use excluding pigs and horticulture.
I am thinking of buying as I would like to use about 3 acres as additional grazing two horses. . I think I would be OK under the agricultural rule as I would using purely for grazing as I stable at home but only have 1/2 acre so the grazing would be fab.
For the rest I was thinking of renting out in small plots to hobby farmers who want to keep a few sheep/goats,
bee keepers, chicken keepers etc. I am guessing that would all be classified as agriculture.there is good road access and water but no electric. Do you think there would be much demand? What would people pay to rent small half acre plots.

 

[Polos Mum]

I suspect it depends on area but sheep grazing is £100-£200 per acre per year in Yorkshire - tiny amounts of ££.

If you're in the south east and it's pets then maybe speak to local people. or find a similar set up and enquire as to the price.

Chickens would need to be very local people to put them in and out over night, 1/2 acre is too small for sheep. Goats would depend on how industrial your fencing will be. You could spend £5-10k making six secure separate paddocks with individual access and parking.

Maybe easier just to offer a retirement livery or two and keep the whole lot for horses.

 

[AmyMay]

Keep three acres for yourself and offer the other three for sheep grazing (which you can then rotate with the horses). Offering peace meal amounts is not financially savvy, and a real haste. Just keep it simple.

 

[Leam_Carrie]

Sheep are great with horse grazing, so if you could find someone who wants to graze some pet sheep that would be ideal. You could then rotate. I don’t think you’ll have room for multiple paddocks to rent. I think it’s a couple of sheep per acre.

 

[Dasher66]

If you can afford the fencing dog safe fields are earning a bit of money atm. Not sure if that’s allowable under agriculture.

 

[FestiveFuzz]

I could be wrong but I think you have to be careful when it comes to agricultural usage. I know certainly when we were looking for our house last year we were advised that the horses were unlikely to fall under agricultural usage if they were rugged or being fed supplementary feed, we also wouldn’t have been able to exercise them on the land (obviously this part is less relevant for the setup you describe).

We ended up buying an equestrian property so never looked into how easy or hard it was to get agricultural land switched to equestrian usage. Might be worth looking into in your case.

 

[Hepsibah]

I use ag land for part of the year. I work it as sheep grazing plus a couple of horses. You could use it as a hay crop with horses in winter.

 

[JackFrost]

You have a choice. You can do whatever you want informally and hope no one (including your tenants!) ever complains/informs.
The other option is you do it properly, and IME horses are not considered as 'agricultural', and depending on your local authorities you may also find you are considered to be running business activities on your land, so various tax implications, insurance, public liabilities etc. As you are at the stage of buying, speak to your solicitor about removing the covenant if you want to go down this route.

 

[millikins]

I can't think of many things more likely to create stress and chaos than multiple tenants with multiple small animals on your property As Hepsibah points out, take a hay crop and save yourself money.

 

[NLPM]

Depending on the type of land, you might be glad to have six acres of grazing over winter. My winter field is 6 acres, split into paddocks. I rotate regularly, which means I get through very little hay and almost never have any serious mud, except for the field shelters and gateways. It's also very useful to be able to have 'spare' grazing whilst paddocks are recovering after harrowing/spraying/topping, if a fence is damaged, and so on.

I agree with the others that there's little to be gained financially from renting out small pockets, but a lot to consider.
Things like access (parking, and also access to each 'plot' that means no one has to cross someone else's patch); responsibility for maintenance and fencing. I think it could be easy to end up making a loss on rental income through fencing alone. I'd also worry about people feeding the ponies whilst there. It depends why you want to rent it though - if it's to make money, I think that's unlikely unfortunately. If it's because you want more people around to keep an eye on the horses whilst you're not there, or for company etc., then great.