Hobby farm -- how much work is it really?

[gertie06]

I’ve been involved with horses for 30 years, but always as a boarder. I have one gelding nearing retirement, and a friend’s gelding also nearing retirement. Seems it would be nice to have the two old men at home in their golden years. We might also add a mini donk for herd numbers without big cost.

My husband and I have toyed with the idea of a hobby farm, but I really don’t know how much work is involved on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Would anyone mind giving me an overview on the chores and time commitment?

I would let the horses live out in pasture with shelter, except for periods of inclement weather. I would probably install automatic waterers as well.

We live in NC if that matters. Grassy pastures, generally mild winters. Bugs do get bad.

[Ponycatraz]

Depends on how you’re place is laid out. Our old place in Michigan we laid everything out from scratch and every year made upgrades focused on reducing the maintenance and time.

At the old place there was no mud because we excavated for good drainage, the barn with semi doors made it a breeze to stack hay and we could store a years worth, good flooring in stalls with mats to reduce picking time, Nelson waterers that you take the bowl inside to clean in the winter, easy load hay feeders close to where the hay was stored, and feed stations set up so the horses could be fed without having to walk into the pasture.

It took me less time in the morning to feed and pick stalls than my husband Took to feed two cats and clean litter boxes. One person could easily take care of everything and still have time to ride. The lady I sold the house to is a single mom who loves that the place is so low maintenance.

The new place? I love it but the people who laid it out made a lot of bad decisions making everything take longer. It’s going to take a lot of time and labor to get it made into an easy maintenance place.

Wanted to add: our. Our barn was set up with stalls and an awning. The horses s as leafs had the choice to be in or out with permanent stall fans for summer.

[Lucassb]

In addition to the layout, your own preferences will determine a great deal of the workload you can expect. We have just under 7 acres, most in four board fenced pasture. I spend a fair amount of time on the weekends puttering around with garden projects or weed eating the fence lines, but I’m picky about stuff like that and my current yard service doesn’t do the area around my arena or the back pastures, just the yard around the house, along the drive, and around the pool. The rest of it is up to me and I am persnickety about it looking tidy.

There are basic chores like walking fence lines, mowing, feeding/fertilizing the grass and so on that generally need to be done on any farm. Auto waterers still need to be cleaned and inspected regularly. My retired horse is on the same care program as the ones that are in work and that means he gets groomed daily, bathed regularly, fly sprayed and sun screened daily, shoes checked and so on. There are places around here that don’t do any of that and frankly the horses seem to do fine.

[LilyandBaron]

We have 3 horses and 9 acres. The property is kind of a long rectangle, with house/yard at the front, then the horse barn and pastures, and a pond and woods in the back. Layout, including drainage, is important. That, and good equipment, makes it easy. The daily care requirements are minimal. Mine have stalls and are turned out half of the day (night in summer). I added overhangs and adding doors from the stalls into them is on the list… They don’t have free access to the stalls, but turnout/in is just into the aisle - no leading required, which is huge. With three stalls, I spend less than 20 minutes cleaning, and maybe 15 minutes feeding and watering (am/pm). So maybe an hour total per day if I’m not riding or hanging out to just keep them alive. With retirees and run-ins, it’d be less.

The time suck is the projects - either improvements if you don’t buy a turn-key property or have the budget to build from scratch; or the repair projects. We have dead ash trees that have fallen on the back fence line at times, so even absent improvements, there are projects. DH does the groundskeeping, so that saves me a ton of time. In summer, with about 5 acres requiring regular mowing, in addition to periodic pasture mowing, maybe 5 hours mowing each week on a commercial grade zero turn.

I ride more at home than I did boarding, barring bad weather. So for retirees, I don’t think it’s too much, unless you travel extensively and don’t have options for farmsitters.

[GoodTimes]

Leaving them out 24/7 with auto waterers instead of stalls eliminates a ton of work.

My parents have a farm about 5 miles from their waterfront property. My mom set up security cameras so she could check on them throughout the day without physically having to drive over.
Based on the cameras she could see when they would come up to shelter from the weather or bugs. That’s usually when she would head over to brush them, fly spray and feed them.
The cameras also give her comfort if they want to head out of town for a night.
In the spring and fall she will sometimes go over and they ignore her. They’d rather stay out grazing than come in for lunch. She never goes more than two days without checking the water, in case it were to break.

Winter can become more labour intensive with clearing snow, blanketing, heating water, providing hay, etc.

[Foxglove]

@Ponycatraz is absolutely correct about layout being key. I have just under 20 acres, a house, stable, small dressage ring, large dressage ring, two run-in sheds, and four horses. My minimum time in the winter is 1 hour a day, each day (feed, blanket, hay, check the horses). My minimum time in the summer is less --no hay, no blankets, just fly masks. However, I choose to spend much, much more time with the horses and on the farm --I have a large garden of hosta --I mow the yard, and two pastures, I maintain the rings --and I ride --I ride a lot --every day --sometimes two horses a day and occasionally 3. I guess if I were to hire the labor aspect, I would expect someone to work 15-20 hours a week. Don’t know if that helps --Be aware that I am a minimalist. We don’t have fences that need painting, I use chemicals to control weeds (less mowing in the biggest pastures --and no weed eating -I hate weed eating). Our place is tidy, but not pristine.

[FlamingoRider]

We have 3 at home, mostly living out. Basic chores (feed, hay, water, check for injuries, masks/blankets on/off) take about 30 minutes twice a day. Plus grooming and riding time.

Weekly basics in the barn are bucket scrubbing, cobwebbing and sweeping. 2-3 hours. We pick manure in the areas closest to the barn a couple times a week to keep things nice, 30-90 minutes each time depending on whether they’re staying up a lot eating hay (winter) or mostly out in the pasture.

We are fortunate to have an excellent farrier who comes reliably, and a great vet who comes when needed. I’ve been in places where it was hard to get those professionals to attend to a small number of horses. Worth checking on before you dive in.

Grass maintenance labor varies hugely by season. In August it seems like we’re mowing every week. Last week we put down grass seed and harrowed it in, a bit over 4 hours total. I usually spray for weeds twice a year, March and early summer, which used to take as much as 8 hours but after 12 years is down to 3 or 4. Most hated chore award goes to trimming along the fences and around the barn where the mower doesn’t fit. 3 to 5 hours, I tend to only do it three or four times a year, tolerating a certain amount of scruffiness rather than doing it more. (All of this work could be hired out if you don’t want to spend the time and invest in the equipment required.)

And then there’s repairs… Don’t even know how to tell you what to expect, except that things always break at the most inconvenient times. Spending a few hours every month checking everything and fixing things at the first sign of wear will help to minimize the nasty surprises, but there’s just no way around dealing with downed fences, downed trees, and ants shorting out the well pump switch.

The other factor to consider for keeping horses at home is that you either have to BE home twice a day, or you have to find a reliable helper/sitter. Because they freefeed hay, our horses are pretty flexible about what time meals get served, which does make it easier. We trade travel coverage with the neighbor across the street. For the times we’re both gone at the same time, or when I’m away for longer and want the horses groomed, there are a few local pony club and 4H kids that offer affordable help.

[Texarkana]

How much work is it? As much as you want to make for yourself. A lot of the workload depends on your preferences, also the maintenance level of your individual horses. That’s why it’s so hard to give an overview of chores: person A has easy keeping horses living on the back 40 and maybe eyeballs them twice a week where as person B insists you need to pick up every manure ball within 2 seconds of it touching the ground so it won’t scald the grass. :lol:

But my horses live out 24/7. They come in to their stalls twice daily to eat. It takes about an hour to feed them at each meal, mainly because I have slow eating older horses. While they are eating, I try to do other routine chores like scrubbing and filling water troughs and picking stalls in addition to things like throwing hay, changing blankets, applying fly spray, etc. Summers involve mowing. Other tasks crop up that are hard to quantify: repairs, pasture maintenance, stacking hay, etc. That stuff tends to wait until the weekends (unless it’s a repair that needs to be done ASAP). Sometimes it might take an hour or two, sometimes it might be an all day project.

[HungarianHippo]

Put it this way: we don’t watch much TV.
When everything’s in order and the horses are healthy, summer daily chores are maybe 30min a day total. Winter’s more like 45-60min. If you have a horse with an abscess or on stall rest, your time commitment goes way up. Or a water hydrant freezes and you have to carry buckets from the house. Or it’s icy and you have to tiptoe around slowly to keep from falling. On weekends, I’d say about 60-70% of my waking time is horse or property work, whether it’s projects, repairs, mowing, etc.
My two live out except in really bad weather. They have free access to a section of the barn, though, that I have to clean out. I save that task until the weekend. Only takes about 30-45 min, including time running the manure spreader. I don’t pick out the barnyard-- just drag and/or scrape it periodically. As long as everyone’s healthy and safe, I’m absolutely fine with things looking imperfect.

[wildlifer]

It does, as others have said, depend on personal preference & how you set it up. Mine live out 24/7. I’m also in NC. I didn’t build stalls, so I don’t have to clean them & spend $0 on bedding. I ride in my field. I don’t care about landscaping. I use low maintenance fencing. So my 10 acres is very manageable for 1 person. I work full-time off property & my job requires a fair amount of travel. I have 2 horses. Morning feeding is about 10 minutes. Evening I usually take more time to groom, piddle around with whatever (if I’m not riding). I usually mow/do projects on weekends. But my philosophy is the grass will always be there later (as will whatever is broken or needs attention) so I just do it when it gets done, if it takes a while , shrug.

It also depends on how much $ you have, although people don’t like to say that. I have to do pretty much everything myself because I don’t have $, which in turn influences how I design things. If you can hire people to do things for you, that’s a whole different ball game & tool box I don’t have access to.

[costco_muffins]

This is one of those that’s up to you. We have 12 horses on our small farm currently, and I can do all the horse chores in about two hours if I’m efficient. It was much faster when we had less I do not stall horses, as turn in/out and stall picking is labor and $$ intensive.

To make our farm manageable, we:

-have horses in drylots, in groups
-drylots have matted shelters, sand pits for napping and rolling

• paddocks picked daily, using snow shovels in the matted shelters
• large water troughs dumped and scrubbed when low (every four days or so)
• hay fed 24/7 in whole bale slow feeders, meaning you replace hay bales every 2-3 days per horse
  -grain fed 1x daily, in evenings, at same time as legs/wellness checks. Most horses (even hard keeping OTTBs) are on just a ration balancer
• all manure composting is downhill from paddocks

These things make the farm so easy to manage. It doesn’t ever feel like a burden. To be fair, we also have two tractors (22 and 47hp) and a quad and those things help us get chores done efficiently too.

[walkinthewalk]

What they all said.

Can’t say enough about good drainage and putting thought into layout.

We can have frog–strangling rain for several days and still not have mud because this property has the best natural drainage I have ever seen. We built the buildings in key areas to where the water naturally runs away from them, with the help of gutters and downspouts.

We have 25 acres, fenced and cross-fenced. There is always something to do but if the land is good land and buildings are erected according to what the land is saying, the to-do list isn’t that bad.

Our biggest thing is bush hogging as we cut every inch of property that doesn’t have a tree on it.

Our second biggest thing is weed whacking and cutting ancient trees off the perimeter fence when lightening and high winds take them out:(

Then there is equipment. If you don’t have the right equipment to get the jobs done, you could find yourself paying out a lot of money to hire things done. It also helps a lot if one of you is a pretty decent mechanic to do simple maintenance on those mechanical devices when they need it:)

We built this place for retirement, so it was built with the thought that we would not be as mobile in our 70’s as in our 50’s and we were right:).

[js]

There is yard work that isn’t associated with owning horses. You have to mow, prune trees/shrubs etc. manage fences, projects on the house itself. Sometimes size is less of an issue as to what is on the land. Lots of trees require lots of maintenance, pruning, raking leaves, spraying etc.; if lots of grass, lots of mowing, especially in warmer climates. Then there is bug control, ants, termites, you name it. Along with that comes owning equipment, might be a riding mower or if more land a tractor and a few implements.

Having horses out in pasture with a run in doesn’t necessarily mean work free, there is still work that is involved. You’ll need to keep pastures picked of manure or at least drag it to spread manure out. I personally like it taken out of the pasture to help reduce flies.

Pasture will need to be mowed at some point depending on size, may have to fertilize and/or spray for weeds. If you are in a warmer part of the country you may have to deal with fire ants.

You will still need to clean automatic waters and check water levels to make sure they are working properly. Depending on your horses they may still need to be fed daily. Just putting them out in a pasture doesn’t mean they don’t require work.

If you are buying a place with an existing home, remember that will require work, especially if older. Projects always present themselves.

A hobby farm is a commitment to some level of daily and weekend work and then there is the issue of vacations. There is a lot to love about having a farm but you need to be prepared to do some work.

[HungarianHippo]

OP, I know you didn’t ask about this, but do not board your friend’s horse without a written contract. Just do a search on here and you’ll see how many informal boarding arrangements among friends goes bad. Really bad.

You need to spell out expectations about division of labor, costs, frequency and time of visits, can the friend bring other friends/family to visit or ride the horse? You like your friend’s current horse-- but what if she gets a new one that she wants to ride a lot more-- do you really want to have people riding around your property while you’re having a BBQ with other guests? What if that new horse is poorly behaved?

And make sure your homeowners’ insurance will cover you if you have a boarder. For most policies, it will force you into getting commercial insurance. (And hiding the fact that you’ve got a boarder, in order to avoid the more expensive insurance, is considered fraud and it’s a Really Bad Idea). Honestly, most people, once they work through all the details of accepting boarders, decide against doing so.

[ElementFarm]

I’m a little late to the party, but also live in NC (the Sandhills area) Horse keeping in our part of the country is much less labor-intensive than New England or the Midwest.

As others have said, efficient layout is key. Minimizing steps-per-day, maximizing things like mud-control and low-maintenance fencing, and having realistic expectations are what make a hobby farm fun and rewarding, as opposed to a time-sucking frustration.

We have about 8-12 horses on our small farm at any given time. We have 6 stalls and the rest live out with run-in sheds. And when weather is mild, the riding/show horses may still spend 23 hrs/day outside, only coming in for meals.
I’d say winter is the most time-intensive period for farm and horse care. We average 3 hrs/day during the winter months (blanket changes, horses spend more time in stalls, etc). In the summer, all horse care can take :30-1.5 hrs/day. Additional farm chores (dragging, mowing, weed whacking) probably average another 4-6 hrs/week.

Having the right equipment makes a huge difference. Using a tractor to drag a large pasture is SO much faster and less frustrating than hand-picking all the piles. Invest in smart fencing with lots of gates up front, and a single string of hotwire over the top boards can save you tons of time in the longrun as the horses aren’t abusing the fencing so much, requiring fewer repairs.

If you live in a relatively horsey area, finding farm help isn’t a big deal, so vacations, dinners out, etc are still pretty easy to arrange. If you teach your horses to accept some flex time in their schedule (e.g dinner can be fed between 4pm and 8pm) then working around your other commitments is no big deal. As others have stated, the less handling of the horses and the less stall cleaning required, the less time the day-to-day tasks will take. And if you are willing to accept some weeds in the fenceline and don’t hold yourself to magazine-profile-standards, farm maintenance doesn’t take long either.

Definitely consider if you want to be able to ride at home, as that will require additional consideration when setting up the farm (arena, tack room, etc) and when planning, design for growing needs (that potential mini donk, you might want to breed in the future, or take on an additional riding horse, retiree, or husband horse). --we moved to our current place with just 4 horses and no intention of adding more than 1-2 to the herd.

I adore having my horses grazing out my living room windows, and never want to go back to boarding. However having a farm is a significant financial and time investment, so it’s good you’re carefully considering what’s involved. If you have friends or acquaintances with small-ish hobby farms, ask if you can go spend an afternoon with them. See how they’re laid out, and ask what the owners would change now that they know more. Volunteer to help with the chores to see how long it takes, and if you’re physically comfortable with them. I know I LOVE talking about my farm, and would be happy to show someone what we did that works well, and the things that don’t. I’m sure other proud hobby-farm owners are the same.

[buck22]

@Texarkana

How much work is it? As much as you want to make for yourself. A lot of the workload depends on your preferences, also the maintenance level of your individual horses.

Yup, exactly.

I have been self-care boarding for almost a decade now. I have 3 horses that live out 24/7 and an hour drive round trip. I can take care of basic essentials in 45 minutes - and much of that time is just monitoring my toothless golden oldie as he slurps his hard feed. Daily rush chores are pick and sweep run-in, hay, feed, make sure all appendages are still attached, swap blankets, find/replace fly masks, fly spray, scrub and fill water tank, pick feet, kiss noses and stuff faces with treats.

My horses are low maintenance and easy keepers, they are fed once a day and have free choice hay 24/7.

BUT, I can easily spend 6+ hours a day with chores, and frequently have to set aside that much time for maintenance, mowing, fixing, dragging, etc.

It all depends on how your farm is set up, how challenging your horses are to manage, and how particular you are : )

[Tarlo_Farm]

What everyone has said, special attention to HungarianHippo. And, be aware you will never be able to be far from home for any length of time unless you find a good house-sitter/chore neighbor. I’ve had horses at home(s) for over 40 years, and I’ve been blessed with great folks to step in when I wanted to take a vacation.

[katyb]

It’s a bit of work. I enjoy most of it, most of the time. I wouldn’t trade having them out my window for anything. The daily work is less of an issue (it’s good for you!) than being tied down. But if you have other animals, you’re dealing with that already. I have 2 horses on 6 1/2 acres. They are only stalled to be fed their pellets, twice a day. I feed round bales and/or big squares. It’s not a lot of work. There is mowing, replacing the occasional fence board, and such. It is so very worth it.

[DunByMistake]

As others have said, it depends so much on the layout of your property and your standards. We probably spend 10 hours a week (or less) doing actually ‘farm work’. This is things like putting out new round bale, cleaning trough, picking pens, harrowing, seeding, fertilizing grass, mowing etc. We’ve been putting in more time this year because we moved here a year ago and pastures were not well cared for. Fixing up neglected issues has been our biggest challenge but we’ve almost got everything dialed in now.

We’ve put a lot of time into our lawn this year because it was also neglected. However even if we lived in town, that work would be required. Hopefully after this year it won’t be quite so labor intensive.

We have put a deposit on a tractor which should arrive in next month and I can honestly say it will be the happiest day of my life. We’ve also ordered a seed/fertilizer spreader for behind quad. Equipment makes all the difference.

My personal philosophy is riding comes first. I can live with letting some things go to get time in the saddle. My husband and I both love our farm and cannot imagine living in town. I can honestly say it’s been such a blessing during this crazy time to have some space to roam around on.

[streamline]

Probably more than you’d except. We have 4 horses on 20 acres. We water them out of the creek 90% of the time. Fork hay in the winter. No stalls. Still have to harrow the pasture etc. My FIL probably spends 2-3 hours outside a day weeding etc. He doesn’t touch the horses. He also has a large vegetable garden and lots of trees. There’s one big pole barn and a smaller sheep pen/ paddock area. They build the place from the ground up.