Homestead Planner: Animals per Acre, Garden Size and Rainwater

What fits on your land, from horses to hens.

Use the tool

How many animals can five acres carry? How big a garden feeds two people? How much rain can your roof catch? The Homestead Planner answers with university extension guidelines and your state’s rainfall.

Enter your pasture acres, household size and roof size to see a starting plan, and your state’s plant hardiness zones.

AHO Buyer’s Toolkit · Free tool
Homestead Planner

What fits on the land? Enter the acres and the state to see how many animals the pasture can carry, how big a garden feeds your household, and how much rain your roof can catch.

Count only open land animals can graze, not woods, the house or the yard.
About the size of the house’s footprint, plus barns if you would collect from them.
Where these numbers come from
  • Horses: about 2 acres per horse on well-managed pasture in the East, and up to 30 to 38 acres on dry, non-irrigated range, Extension Horses.
  • Cattle: 1.5 to 2.5 acres per cow-calf pair on improved pasture, Alabama Cooperative Extension; about 1.5 to 2 acres per cow per month on dryland, Colorado State Extension (about 18 to 24 acres a year).
  • Goats and sheep: 6 to 8 goats or 5 to 6 sheep per acre of excellent pasture, University of Georgia Extension; on dry range we use 6 goats per cow unit, Extension Goats.
  • Hens: 3 to 4 square feet each inside the coop and 10 in the run, Extension Poultry.
  • Garden: about 100 square feet per person for fresh vegetables, Colorado State, and about 100 more per person to preserve, Clemson.
  • Rain from the roof: square feet × inches of rain × 0.623 gallons, University of Nebraska Extension; state rainfall from NOAA 1991-2020 normals. Some western states limit rainwater collection: check the Water Check.
  • Hardiness zones: 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, summarized by state from its official ZIP-code data.

Starting points only. Pasture quality, rainfall, hay and management change everything. Your county extension office can tell you what works on that land, and the county may limit livestock on small parcels.

Good to know

Pasture quality and management change everything. Your county extension office can tell you what works on that land.

This tool is part of the free AHO Buyer’s Toolkit, a set of tools for people buying an affordable home with land in the United States. For the full checklist before you make an offer, get our free Rural Property Buyer’s Field Guide.