Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Moo Cow Question.

Consider this to be in Va or WV where it rains and grass grows. How many acres required per cow?

In Tennessee rule of thumb in my area is 1 cow per acre but many try to do 2 per acre of pasture.

2 acre per cow don’t quote me on that I raise chickens

Everyone , including farmers around here, are trying to feed more cows on less grass. I wonder why sticks of butter look smaller, yet cost more!

Depends on if you just want to go with sticking them on the pasture you if you want to look at management intensive grazing and put in the effort to rotationally graze them.

When we were raising beef in Tennessee, the local rule of thumb was an acre of pasture and an acre of hay ground for each cow/calf pair to support the herd year round. That ratio seemed to work pretty well for all our neighbors in the beef business. Dairy cows got lots of supplemental feed, so those operations ran considerably more animals per acre.

The organic herds around here are feeding less supplements and more grass/hay. Many are not using TMR (totally mixed rations) either, especially the Mennonite and Amish herds.

I like about 3 acres to the cow. Droughts happen. When the grass starts outrunning the cows you need to bale it before it gets too tough and less digestible. A little manure in the hay is OK if you aren't trying to sell it.

I usually bush hog off a few acres every week so tender digestible grass can keep coming. If drought sets in I quit mowing and put out some range meal 3/1 cottonseed meal and salt to supplement the tougher grass.

Young grass is worth a lot more than overgrown stems.

In some parts of the country you need special cows known as "10-80 cows." They have mouths 10 feet wide and can run 80 miles per hour, and they can get enough groceries to survive there.

I saw some range like that in Utah last year. Quite desolate.

We feed a fair bit of hay when the cows are on pasture, it depends on the rain.

Growing up in SW PA we milked 26-30 cows. The upper farm had about 180 acres. Probably 80-90 in pasture. The rest was corn, alfalfa, oats, house, barn, sheds, some timber.The lower farm had 160 acres, of that maybe 80 acres in hay, the rest timber.

The pasture stared to give out about mid July. We cut green corn to supplement it along with some hay. We cut ensilage of alfalfa and corn. Usually got three cuttings of hay that filled the barn. We had corn and oats custom ground. When it started to frost, we fed hay, ensilage, and grain until the following green up in spring. So I'd say abut 2 acres per cow.here in Colorado is about 30-35 acres per beef cow/calf pair with some supplement in the winter.

Cows stayed in the barn all winter except to let them out twice a day to water.

To put it in perspective out here in the barren tundra on our better pasture it takes about 5 acres per month, per cow. And that is from May through October, so 6 months equals 30 acres per cow for the grazing season.


Out on out the bigger lease pastures that we share with a couple other ranchers it takes about twice as much.


60k acres runs about 1000 cows for 6 months. But most years that is under stocked which is a GOOD thing.

About an acre per cow. You will need to feed hay from time to time.

I guess I should have specified meat cows. No interest in dairy cows.

I got 30-40 acres of grass and water somebody could graze for free.All they have to do is fence it no takers

It's about the same around here where grasses grow in abundance. Not a lot of huge acreages of pasture , even for beeves! Also, around here even the beef cattle know where home is as supplements are waiting in the bunk for them and also the waterer is there!

Well in our area it varies but normally about 6 to 10 per section. There was a ranch for sale near the Colorado river a few years ago. It was 200 sections of state lease and the permit was for 100 animal units (cow and a calf).

As Sam eluded to, it’s better to be under stocked than to have to feed supplemental feed to a bunch of skinny cows on overgrazed land. Plan your stocking for drought years and enjoy the good years.

Absolutely, it is always better to have more grass than you have cows to eat it. An excess of grass is easy and cheap to manage. A hungry herd that you have to haul feed to or worse yet allow to go hungry is expensive either way you do it.

My old uncle told me long ago ''you can't starve a profit out of a cow''.