How many horses on 1.8 acres?

My land is chalk over sand, not too far away in Norfolk I have about 43/4acres and keep 2 x 15handers and two minis, whilst it is a dream not having mud at any time of year when it's dry, boy it is dry!! Only this year, despite fertilizing, poo picking and all, is the first year for several now that I have a decent covering of grass and its still by no means prolific and I am not having to restrict the big boys at all. So, I would have to say that you might be lucky if you can manage with your one horse and a pony on that amount of land and manage to maintain any cover of grass all year.
 
Kallibear said:
I entirely depends on how wet the field is!

If it's free draining and dry you could manage 2 horses on that easily enough. If it's wet or boggy you couldn't even keep one horse on it.

At that size you will need to think about hay all year round so it's really the mud which will become a problem.
Click to expand...

In response to the above... We have 1.9 acres of wet clay soil for one horse and she was out 10 hours a day during the hunting season and out 24 7 since we finished hunting and it was absolutely perfect. I wouldn't have wanted another horse on there nor one that galloped about churning up the ground but for just one horse - it worked brilliantly. Yes, bits did get a bit boggy but nothing major. She didn't have hay in the field once over the winter and now summer is here - we have a ridiculous amount of grass.

So yes you def. can have a horse on 1.8 acres!! However, before we moved in here there was 1 horse and 2 ponies in the field and it was way, way too much for the land to cope with. The field was a total mess with no grass at all.
 
Hmm, thanks for all the replies! I know it is a hard question to give a definitive answer but it is good to see how many you are all managing and how the grass is doing. Although the soil is often chalky round here I would have to check as it is not really visibly chalky from what I can see.

I think I can probably chance having another horse on there if someone wants to rent and hay in winter etc, or two Shetland types perhaps but I really would worry about that at the moment until tb has done some good work on it (hes only been on it a short time) the strip grazing and track system sounds like a good idea I had expected that and I can visualise how I would do it now... I'm going to need a lot of tape!

I do like sheep though. I realise they need shearing and foot trimming etc, will look into the rest. There are a few round here, mostly rareish breeds put there specifically to graze as I don't think it is really sheep country.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top