We have 9 acres. The property out by the road is wet and is really just a buffer. We have 6 acres perimeter fenced. 4.75 acres in pasture. 2 horses.
I have 2 horses and a mini on twelve acres, about eight of which are pasture. A little less than 2 acres is used as a sacrifice area, and the rest is cut up into three sections for rotational grazing. The land is what realtors describe as “rolling/sloping”, and the soil is sandy loam.
When looking at prospective properties, be sure to think about stuff like drainage, elevation, and soil type, as they can really make a difference in how much of your land is actually usable and productive at various times of the year.
I have about 5 acres in pasture, with two horses and two ponies on it.
We own 20 acres. Half of that is barn/house/arenas/pastures/shop. The other half is forest with trails running through it. We have 6 acres under irrigation (an acre for the house area) and another 2 acres in fenced dry lot. I only graze the horses spring-summer-fall and let the pastures rest for the winter. I feed hay 4x day in the winter and then as they ramp up grazing, I decrease the amount of hay I feed.
Our property is a mix of pasture, sandy desert, volcanic rock, and trees. There are parts of it that are just unusable because of the rocks, but that’s just fine with me as I like having areas that I don’t have to take care of! :lol: We do have a barn (thank goodness for the heated tack room and hot water heater) where the horses come in at night, but their paddocks are pretty big and they spend 95% of their time outdoors, either in their paddocks or group turnout in the dry lot or the pasture.
We keep three horses here. The seller had four, I think. We moved here from 5 acres where we had the same three horses and sometimes we had four horses. We had awesome neighbors who let our horses graze on their property and they also had 5 acres (maybe 3 for grazing). The people we bought the 5-acre place from had two goats, a bunch of cows, and more horses than we had. I honestly don’t know what the county’s rules were about livestock.
It really does depend on your setup.
We have 80 acres of prairie land with 2 horses. Right now we only have about 2-3 acres fenced in for the horses. We’re a bit cash poor from buying the house but we will be fencing it in 10-20 acre pasture sections.
You can see the dry lot where the horses are now. The darkened rectangle is our property including the house and barn.
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We have 10 acres and three horses. 9 acres is open pasture for grazing and my neighbor cuts it for hay in the spring and summer for his cattle.
The horses have 24’ x 24’ all weather paddocks attached to their stalls and I just leave the doors open all the time so they are never cooped up in the 12 x 12 stalls.
My advice is to go with a few more acres then you think you need. I have never heard a horse person say “I wish I had LESS land”
I have 32 acres but only about 15-16 acres is fenced. The “upper 15” is going back to woods and I use it as a buffer zone. 3 horses. The 2 IR ones get limited turnout on about a half acre. I may increase the size of this pasture. My other horse gets about 15 acres to herself. She pretty much has her stall door open all the time. In the summer she prefers to stand in the stall day and night under her fan and eat hay. So she has little impact on the grass. My neighbor cuts my pasture for cow hay twice a year.
Where you are makes a big difference in how much land you need. Southern grasses like Bermuda and Bahia grow by rhizomes and recover from horse traffic a lot faster than northern “clump” grasses. I do not do sacrifice areas and I have very little mud in the winter despite a lot of winter rain. However I found from the few times we have had snow that melting snow makes things a much bigger muddier mess than just getting rain. So something to think about.
