[Hevxxx99]

But i'll tell you this for free, you will get more money from horse folk. . . . . . . but they will ruin your land, which will cost you a lot to fix. Or you take less cash from a sheep man, and in turn, they will improve (if done correctly) the land no end.

I find this usual myth extremely galling.   

If you put too many animals of any type on too little land, it will get ruined.  Most horse owers will take whatever they can get and most field owners are too greedy so allow too many on. This, combined with the fact that horse owners as a rule know little about land management and horses are fussy grazers who eat in patches, makes fields look ragged. If you put cattle on the same area of land over winter, they would poach it as much as horses if not more.  If you tend the fields as well as you would/should with other stock, keep them off badly drained areas in winter, top and rotate grazing, there is no problem.  I have 8 horses on 15 acres with a small flock of sheep and geese, who eat the stuff the horses leave, take a crop of hay each year and my land is never ruined or poached.

[Porterlauren]

You said it yourself . . . . most horse owners know little about land management.

I get plenty of ex horse grazing to sort out. Never been offered any to sort out after sheep.

[Hevxxx99]

Indeed! But using your figures, if I was the landowner, having to mind someone else's sheep all winter and feeding hay when it snowed, for a maximum of  £12.50 a week, or have horses, I'd rather have three or four horses for  a minimum £10 per week per head with no requirement to look after them and have to top, harrow and even possibly re-sow in patches as I went along.  The price difference is only justifiable if you do that.

I'd even go as far as try to educate the horse owners so they could help....

As I say, people try to put too many horses on land and then don't help the owners to keep the land in good order.  Apart from ignorance, not many horse owners have the equipment to care for land so have to rely on contractors who mostly spurn small acerages and deride horse owners.

[SteveHants]

In my experience, horse owners will be given a plot of land and will then buy as many bloody horses as they can squeeze on it....and then it will poach in winter and.....


The landowner gives it to sheep man for nothing to sort out.

[Hevxxx99]

In my experience, the landowner charges per head at a rate far inflated above that for any other animal, allows far too many horses per acre to maximise profit, to the detriment of the land and the horses, sits aroud moaning about the mess and still doesn't expect to have to do anything at all for his easy money.

He even then expects a sheep farmer to sort it out for him for free afterwards! 

[Hellybee]

Our neighbour us upped our rent to five hundred for the year from three even though we only settled on the latter a few months before.  We still havent fixed the shed, well, what's left of it.