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How much to charge for grazing sheep?

8 replies

MissBrown · 06/04/2013 13:55

I rent a field on which I am allowed to sub-let. Someone is coming to see it later with a view to keeping sheep there. How much do I charge?

I have four acres, with a shed and water (that I pay for seperately). I will have upto 4 ponies (max) on the field and there will be 4 sheep.

Help! Want to give him a price that is competitive but not a give away.

OP posts:

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Eve · 06/04/2013 17:13

Have you got security fencing? Sheep will get out through smallest gap.

Is this to share with your ponies?

I would charge 25-30 a month.

I have in back of my mind, if you share grazing with livestock, ponies need a different type of wormer from the usual....

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newfavouritething · 06/04/2013 22:31

Typical sheep grazing rates are 25p per sheep per week, but that's on a commercial basis. Someone with only four sheep might pay well more. Alternatively, in livestock units a horse is 1, and sheep about 0.1 if i remember rightly, so 4 sheep would be equivalent to half a horse/acre, so maybe 1/8th of your rent would be fair?

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newfavouritething · 06/04/2013 22:35

And sheep don't really drink, so wouldn't expect any significant increase in water costs.

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QuietTiger · 07/04/2013 09:27

Newfavouritething - I'm not sure where you are, but around here (south Wales), TACK sheep are between 58p - 70p/sheep/week. Certainly DH is charging around the 60p mark and our neighbour is managing to get 80p much to DH's irritation

My Smallholding neighbour with 17 pet sheep was supposed to be paying us £25/month to run them on 20 acres.

HTH OP.

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frostyfingers · 07/04/2013 11:40

I disagree with the sheep don't really drink bit - I was forever filling up the water containers last year (and it wasn't hot....).

What about doing a swap rather than actual money changing hands - could the sheep owner cut your hedges, remove your muck heap, top your grass, harrow etc instead? I do this and find it so much easier than faffing about with cash.

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Butkin · 07/04/2013 18:03

We don't charge the farmer who puts his sheep on our land. In fact we have to beg him to do it to keep our grass down! He is happy to oblige as we buy our hay off him but don't think he'd pay us as he goes to the trouble of fencing it and he is never short of grazing in Suffolk.

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newfavouritething · 07/04/2013 22:11

QuietTiger - I'm in east yorkshire - not many sheep here, and not a great demand for grazing, I guess that's why it's cheaper. OP what did you decide to charge?

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MissBrown · 07/04/2013 23:00

Hi, and thanks for all your replies. We chatted about money for a while and he said that most of his land is not paid for in cash, he just gives the land owner a lamb or similar (he has lots of rare breed animals). He also mentioned that he will be making hay on some of his land so that might be useful too!

I did mention that I thought £25 a month was roughly what I wanted. He didn't give a firm answer but I think we will come to some arrangement whether it is money or an exchange of services.

Grazing for horses is in huge demand here (North Wales coast) so I was lucky to get my field. Someone got in touch yesterday asking if I was definitely having it!

Again thank you for your replies and I hope I can update with a definite answer of our arrangement soon!