Hi Cherry,

My name is Kaitlyn and I am trying to decide if my one acre piece of land will be enough for my two horses. I live in Maryland and I have a 6 year old paint and a 18 year old pony. All together they would have about a 1/4 acre a land each. They would only be allowed about 1-2 hours of grass daily and will each have a stall and a sacrifice area for the time that they are not on pasture. They will be ridden daily and will be supplemented with good quality hay and grain. Do you think this would be enough land? What are the minimum space requirements for horses to provide enough room for exercise?

Hi Kaitlyn,

The amount of land isn't as important as the level of management.

If these horses are ridden daily as you say, what you outline below sounds great. Bravo for thinking ahead and planning the sacrifice pens.

Your challenge will be to manage the land so it doesn't become overgrazed. It will be tempting for you to let the horses be out more than the pasture can handle.

What would be ideal is to divide the 1/2 acre into two pieces. Graze the grass when it is 6 inches tall and when 50% of it is 3 inches tall, move the horses over to the other pasture. When a pasture is idle, you can spot mow the weeds - but set your mower on high so it doesn't mow the grass, just the tall weeds. Because these are small pastures, you could use a walk-behind mower or weed whacker to target just the areas where weeds grow.

As long as these horses are ridden every day or 4-5 times a week, they will have plenty of exercise and when you turn them out, they will likely just put their heads down and eat or perhaps roll in the grass.

But to answer a little more specifically about acreage, one acre is 43,560 feet. If it was a perfect square it would be about 209 feet on each side. But land parcels are usually rectangular so that is why I used the example in Horsekeeping on a Small Acreage of one acre dimensions of 264 feet by 165 feet.

So if the horse pasture area is half that, or 132 x 165 but you divide that into two smaller pastures for rotational purposes, you'd end up with two pastures of 66 x 165. This is interesting because a dressage arena is 66 feet wide (and either 132 or 198 feet long), so what you have ended up with are two pastures that are the size of a dressage arena for the horses to graze and exercise in. Sweet !

I applaud your efforts to keep your horses (and yourself and your family) on one acre - it take diligence and good management.

Best of luck and keep me posted on how you lay things out.

For more resources for developing and managing your facilities, refer to

Horsekeeping on Small Acreage

Your Horse Barn, DVD

Horse Housing

Stablekeeping

Cherry Hill's Horsekeeping Almanac

Ask Cherry Hill