cost to lease a pasture?

[kelpiegirl]

Hi everyone

Well, I went and looked at the property- it is very nice-flat and very close to home. We talked about pricing, but neither of us had any idea. Any idea what the going rates are -say per acre/per sheep?

Thanks

Julie

[Bill Fosher]

I don't pay anything for any of the pasture I use. But I am providing a service to the landowners by keeping their land open and improving the sward.

[kelpiegirl]

That would be nice- except this particular pasture is already occasionally used for horses.

Julie

 

I don't pay anything for any of the pasture I use. But I am providing a service to the landowners by keeping their land open and improving the sward.

[Wendy V]

Ag rates in the midwest run from $50-80 per acre per season, but that may rise due to increased corn demand. Pasture only rent for horses is about $150 per month. Rates may vary due to local demand. I would consider $100 per month or lower a real bargin when one considers that won't even cover the cost of taxes per year.

 

HTH

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Is it already fenced appropritely for sheep? When you keep sheep remotely, good fencing is a must.

[bexie]

Hi everyone

Well, I went and looked at the property- it is very nice-flat and very close to home. We talked about pricing, but neither of us had any idea. Any idea what the going rates are -say per acre/per sheep?

 

We just rented a pasture for our horses from the neighbor. We paid the cost of what he was giving up--usually he makes hay on the pasture. He can do without it but then he also can't sell the extra hay. So we're paying the value of the hay he could have baled and for the fertilizer he put on it this spring and a bit more for his labor spreading it. (In the future, we'll do that part ourselves if we can arrange a long-term lease)

 

We're responsible for the fence and water.

 

So maybe you could arrange to pay enough to make up for whatever he otherwise loses by letting you have it. But if the owner provides anything else--fencing, water, etc.--it would be reasonable to pay even more.

[Bill Fosher]

If it were reasonable to pay $100 per month to pasture 10 ewes, lamb would cost $235/lb.

 

Out in the PNW where sheep are often used to graze grass seed fields, and in the Central Valley in California where sheep are wintered on alfalfa ground, prices are between half a cent and one cent per head per day for the feed. Fencing is usually erected and removed by the sheep operation.

 

I realize that the purpose of the arrangement being discussed here isn't lamb production, but if I were going to pay $100 per month for pasture for 10 sheep, it would have to be fully fenced, and the owner would have to provide all the maintenance (mowing it when it got ahead of the sheep, correcting fertility problems, reseeding as needed, etc.).

 

It's not reasonable to compare what people pay for horse pasture becuase horses are horribly destructive to grass, while sheep are generally at least benign if not actually helpful. I say "generally" becuase it is possible to kill grass with sheep, but the sheep will have to be pretty close to dead as well.

[Guest pax]

Go to the Co-Op or feed store and look on the bulletin board. I think pasture rental has to be area specific, and that's where I'd expect to be able to get a good idea. Here, I would easily pay $300 for a horse-fenced and safe field or any reasonable size (5 acres +/-).

 

Make sure you nail down who does fence and grass maintenance.

 

Is there water? Assuming that's a well so there's no bill for that.

[kelpiegirl]

Here are photos of the pasture. There is some question as to whether I will be putting in electronet to divide it up so that when I am not working the sheep, the horses can go through either the front, or back half. How does it look?

 

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

You wouldn't be able to work with electronet in the field unless your dog is pretty solid and reliable. There's obvious safety issues of entanglement, of course, but you also never want to teach your sheep to jump the stuff. Also, I'd never use electronet in a situation where there's no one checking the sheep several times a day. I've come along and found lambs and small sheep with their heads stuck in it - would have been tragic if I hadn't been right there.

 

You can, of course, either move the sheep out of the field to work, or take down the electronet while you work.

 

Otherwise it looks pretty nice.

[Guest pax]

I don't like sharing fields and wouldn't do it if I had an option.

 

Do you have lambs? Can they squeeze out the bottom? It's hard to tell.

[kelpiegirl]

What I would like to do is have the entire section to myself- it's about 4+ acres that is totally fenced in- some areas need refencing. I know I need an area that is pretty much square- there is no sense working on good outruns in skinny areas. I will have to see what she thinks. There are other areas on the farm to consider as well.

Julie

[kelpiegirl]

Becca

The electronet would only be in place when I wasn't there.....

Julie

 

You wouldn't be able to work with electronet in the field unless your dog is pretty solid and reliable. There's obvious safety issues of entanglement, of course, but you also never want to teach your sheep to jump the stuff. Also, I'd never use electronet in a situation where there's no one checking the sheep several times a day. I've come along and found lambs and small sheep with their heads stuck in it - would have been tragic if I hadn't been right there.

 

You can, of course, either move the sheep out of the field to work, or take down the electronet while you work.

 

Otherwise it looks pretty nice.

[Bill Fosher]

I use electronet in places where I only check on the sheep once a day, and have had minimal problems with it. However, lambs must learn from the day they're born that the stuff hurts like hell if you touch it. If they learn that lesson early and as long as you keep a good charge on it (2.5 kV minimum, 4 or 5 is better) they respect it very well.

 

If your sheep don't know what it is, you should stick around the first afternoon they're in it and make sure that they aren't pushing it. You can usually see when they get their first zap -- they jump back and look puzzled. That's usually all it takes, as long as that first encounter is memorable.

[Tammy525]

I am only replying because my dad and I were just discussing the field next to us. My dad said his cousin in Indiana said farmland is renting for $200.00 per acre, for farming, not for livestock. The field next to us has been widened and cleared and is now 6 acres. The family farming it is very experienced over several generations and expects to make $24,000 for those 6 acres of corn in Ohio. We were curious what their actual profit was as they have all the heavy duty equipment and have spent a HUGE amount of time preparing the field. It was planted with corn year before last (which provided nice privacy for our pool!), but it was left alone last summer and became very overgrown.

 

So, I don't know if that was any help....I was interested to see that there are different prices based on how you plan to use the land.

[Bill Fosher]

They must be expecting to harvest 150 to 200 bushels per acre. Not out of the ballpark, but definitely on the high end of what's possible.

[Tammy525]

Yes, Bill, that is what they were expecting to harvest. However, after testing the soil they have planted soybeans instead. Which is sadness for this city girl, the corn made such a nice privacy fence for our pool.

 

Back to Julie, I did not intend to hijack your thread, especially since I know absolutely nothing about this subject, save what I hear from my dad and what I see the local farmer doing!

[juliepoudrier]

Julie,

I know of one person who rents something like 35 acres of pasture at a farm. It was unused pasture before he rented it. He offered the owners enough money per year to cover the taxes on the property and then some (I think it was around $600-800, maybe as much as $1,000, but I don't think it was that high). It was still very cheap for a year's use of that much pasture (he may have had to add some fencing but I think most was there), but then he's in a relatively low-tax area, and the owners weren't making *any* income off or use of the property so it worked out well.

 

As for electronet I would also worry about tangling, by horses as well as sheep (Bill's right though that if the sheep learn early to repsect it, you shouldn't have problems, but if the charge isn't good for whatever reason sheep will learn to go through it ina hearbeat--and I've seen them tangle themselves so hopeless in a matter of minutes that the fence had to be cut to get them out, but again, the charge may not have been good on that fence). If the horses are not dog aggressive, you can keep sheep and horses together and work the sheep around the horses (as long as the sheep don't get wise and run stand under the horses for protection). I used to do this at the first place I worked dogs, so it's doable as long as your dogs are horsewise.

 

Anyway, I think the cost to rent pasture really will come down to what the owner thinks it's worth and what income, if any, they're making off it now.

 

Celia,

The board fence appears to be lined with field fence, which should help with the lambs squeezing out problem, though apparently the lambs at one of my neighbors' property were doing just that *through* field fence...

 

J.

[bexie]

Yes, Bill, that is what they were expecting to harvest. However, after testing the soil they have planted soybeans instead. Which is sadness for this city girl, the corn made such a nice privacy fence for our pool.

 

Back to Julie, I did not intend to hijack your thread, especially since I know absolutely nothing about this subject, save what I hear from my dad and what I see the local farmer doing!

 

Soybeans can be used to improve the soil somehow. I don't know exactly what it does, but I know that the farmer who rents my parents front fields did this when he first took them over. They'd been used for years for vegetables and sweet corn and probably not fertilized very well. So he planted soybeans but didn't harvest them. He plowed them under. The next year he went on to his normal crops--hay and field corn.

[Bill Fosher]

Soybeans are a legume, which means they capture nitrogen (a main plant nutrient) from the atmosphere and fix it in the soil. Their foliage is also high in nitorgen. Even when they are harvested, only the beans are taken which is a relatively small proportion of the whole plant so when the rest is plowed down it provides a reserve of nitrogen that can be used by crops in the subsequent year.

 

Soybeans or other legumes are also used to break pest cycles in land that has been used for corn for a long stretch of time. Some legumes such as alfalfa have a long tap root that will break up compacted layers of soil from machinery and tillage -- I'm not sure if soybeans have this tap root. I doubt it, since they are an annual.

[Tammy525]

I did hear something about nitrogen. The field had been planted with corn, then left fallow last summer and grew all kinds of weeds, etc. There was a lot of goldenrod and several tree beginnings. I am just happy it is being used again, do I need to do anything besides close the windows and keep the kids/dogs in when they spray?

 

And, thanks for the agricultural info, I know NOTHING about it, but am always interested in learning something new. Both my parents grew up farming and they are next door with my grandma, a woman who thinks she has nothing to offer and yet has more useful info in her head than 10 libraries could hold (and she makes the world's greatest pie). They have a two good size gardens and my dad has made quick friends with the farmers that use the land all around us.

[bexie]

I did hear something about nitrogen. The field had been planted with corn, then left fallow last summer and grew all kinds of weeds, etc. There was a lot of goldenrod and several tree beginnings. I am just happy it is being used again, do I need to do anything besides close the windows and keep the kids/dogs in when they spray?

 

And, thanks for the agricultural info, I know NOTHING about it, but am always interested in learning something new. Both my parents grew up farming and they are next door with my grandma, a woman who thinks she has nothing to offer and yet has more useful info in her head than 10 libraries could hold (and she makes the world's greatest pie). They have a two good size gardens and my dad has made quick friends with the farmers that use the land all around us.

 

I'd suggest making friends with the farmer. Take them one of those pies of your Grandmother's and let them know how happy you are that the land is in use again. If it goes well, ask them if they plan to spray and with what. The local extension agency can probably give you lots of tips, especially if you can find out what they do spray with.

 

Nothing is better than making good friends with the neighbors. :-) Especially helpful just in case the kids or dogs get up to something they shouldn't.

[Tammy525]

I'd suggest making friends with the farmer. Take them one of those pies of your Grandmother's and let them know how happy you are that the land is in use again. If it goes well, ask them if they plan to spray and with what. The local extension agency can probably give you lots of tips, especially if you can find out what they do spray with.

 

Nothing is better than making good friends with the neighbors. :-) Especially helpful just in case the kids or dogs get up to something they shouldn't.

 

Thanks for that tip Bexie, I am already friends, vicariously, through my dad and some of the kids from the family go to school with my boys. They own zillions of acres around here and rent the rest that belong to other people. They have sold little parcels of it for houses (like maybe 10 houses over 200 acres). There are multiple family members scattered around their property in houses here and there. It is a great set-up and I am thrilled that the farming set is spread throughout their family and they are close in age with us and have children our kids' ages. I feel like this helps to protect the land from development. We have no water or sewar or gas, that helps to protect us, too. But wow do I dread the day that changes. I pray every day nothing will change until at least my kids are grown. They are happy people who enjoy their lives, so hopefully that means they will be sticking with it. Multi-generational, too.

 

I should be able to find out exactly what they spray with and when, and I wil take your suggestions for who to contact (saving the info)

 

We always try to be good neighbors just as a general policy for life. But you never know what your kids or dogs might take it in their heads to do!!! Avoiding your ball going into their field is the biggest current risk, they have planted now and I would be horrified to disturb any of that.

 

Now, really, I need to leave this topic as it is not in my realm of knowledge and I don't want to be where I don't belong. Back to general discussion and coffee break!! Thank you for tolerating me for this long.

[kelpiegirl]

It's a go on the field and the sheep. I am getting the fence I need tomorrow (as well as other sundry items) and the sheep will be trailored over sometime this week. Very exciting.

Julie

[nobrabbit]

Hi everyone

Well, I went and looked at the property- it is very nice-flat and very close to home. We talked about pricing, but neither of us had any idea. Any idea what the going rates are -say per acre/per sheep?

Thanks

Julie

 

Whew! Our cost of living must be way lower here in KY. We just leased 15 acres to run some calves on for $300 a year.