On 07/13/2016 02:46 PM, James Wilkinson wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jul 2016 03:51:26 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 07/12/2016 03:01 PM, James Wilkinson wrote:
If you have a couple of acres, that's a field, why not put cattle on it
or a horse?

A horse would starve on one of the 5 acre McMansions around here without
supplemental feed.

Funny, horse handbooks say 1 acre minimum grazing per horse.


A 2 year old is equivalent to 1 AUM, a mature horse 1.25. Depending on
the soil type, on a normal year around here you might get .25 AUM/acre
for native range, a little more for irrigated land. Of course, you would
want to divide your land into rotational plots to assure a feed supply
throughout the growing season but you're not going to be making hay from
any of them. During the winter months you'll need to feed out about 25
pounds of hay per day, more when the temperatures head towards 0F. Say 4
months or 120 days, you'll be feeding a ton and a half of hay that
you'll have to buy. Good years you might pay $100/ton. bad years it
might be twice that.

Of course on 5 acres you'll also be in the waste management business.
That 25 pounds of forage turns into 25 pounds of horse**** which will
turn your pasture sour if you just leave it lie.

The driest parts of the UK get about twice as much rain as we get on a
good year. Irrigate heavily, choose grass species to plant wisely, have
good soil, and the 5 acre horse may not be too boney.