Number of Animals for 3 Acre Pasture

If the calf is being pastured alone..... NOTHING will keep him in. Cows abhor being alone. With buddies and plenty to eat, cows will stay in some really, really crappy fencing though!

My kids forgot to shut the gate to the cow pasture the other day, the bull and steer never noticed and they walked past it to the auto-waterer at least 3x!

In addition to zoning laws check with your local Conservation District. I know in King County, (The county Seattle is in), you can get waivers to allow more animals than zoning regulations allow, if you implement some basic environmental best practices (Which they will some times give you money to do!!). I live on 2.5 acres and by having the county come out evaluate my property and give me some pointers, I can now have twice as many animals, plus I got $1500 last year to rehab my pasture and turn outs. This year they're paying half of the cost to cement my manure area!
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Going to have to disagree with this one

My opinion the goats would be harder to keep in, just like a horse, once a calf learns electric as long as there is food and the fence is good they will stay in


Our main fence around the calves is 3 strands when first let into a 3acre piece, but once they have gotten used to it they go into a single strand electric fence with metal posts, and then we do a poly wire with fiberglass posts to section off for rotational grazing the calves


The biggest thing: build a good fence, buy a good fencer, and keep the brush off of it

Thanks everyone for your help.

Between your input and talking to my Popa (grandpa), we have a solution:

- Pygmy goats in the fenced yard around the house, may expand if we get good tax money back
- Calf is in the shed for now, cozy warm
- By the time the calf is ready to be turned out, we'll have another acre(ish) fenced in with wood cut from Popa's farm (aka free posts)
- Later in the summer, if we need to split the pasture from 4 acres down to 2 & 2 to rotate them through it, we will have the money for more fencing, a gate, and another water trough

Ta Da!

Thanks

It's an ok size! I don't know if the grass will hold up for all of them, but if you don't let it get to high, if will have more nutritional value in it. You may have to feed hay, but I think you should be ok.