Reclaiming Land

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

I have reclaimed, and more importanly claimed land that has never before been used for agriculture. I hesitate to put a figure on the acreage but it is well into three figures in England, Australia, Scotland and Portugal. Certainly all places are different, and even with photographs and descriptions we would all be guessing at your real situation.

I most certainly hope that you have not bought any machinery. You cannot possibly know that it is capable of doing the job you want, and whether or not it is good for your land. The first thing that will happen is that you have lost money, because as soon as you buy the machine it is worth less than you paid for it.

I agree with several other posters that, given your description of difficulty in fencing and the condition of and regrowth on the land that fencing at present is impracticable and probably uneconomic. I also agree that livestock is useful, but highly dependent on your situation and circumstances. Pigs are my favourite animal, but I have not lived near a sales point for them since 1979 so have not owned one since.

On the other hand I have used poultry to do just the job of clearing and improving land. Are you in a position where you could easily sell eggs? If so, go for hens. They will make a great job of cleaning up within about 50 yards of their night shelter. Rarely will they improve beyond that, but by judicious movement of the night shelter(s) you can clear quite a lot of ground in a relatively short space of time. They will also, through their droppings and general scratching about, improve grassland beyond belief to those who have not tried it. They will not make any impact on bigger trees, shrubs and bushes, but they will stop most reseeding, and you will have some access to the bigger stuff which you can then attack manually. Cut down fir will not regrow whichever species it is. Hens will not wander far from "home" and will return there every night. Are your neighbours amenable to the odd one straying across the boundary? If you can cope with the absolute mess that they make, duck eggs can be several times more profitable, but they will not make as good a job of improving the grass as hens will. If you have foxes then you have problems with poultry.

If you feel you cannot handle poultry then I would be inclined to go with sheep that are given some hand feed every night when they are penned. No fences usually mean that sheep of whatever breed (and I have owned more than a few) will wander away. Goats tend to come home at night if they are fed when they return, but they are just browsers and will not clear up ground to any extent unless sometimes if they are starved into doing so, and without fences you cannot do that. As others have said, cattle can do the job, but again without fences you have straying problems. In a fenced situation I had great success in Australia feeding clover seeds in a powdered mineral mix.

Please feel free to PM me if you want to discuss using hens in this way in more detail.
 

Pasty

Member
Location
Devon
Probably the biggest issue is keeping stock in. How about hiring a small digger or bobcat and clearing a 6' track around the outside so a stock fence can go in? Shouldn't take too long depending on the amount of bigger trees. Once it's stock proof you can work from the outside in. Agree with @Oldmacdonald that poultry would be effective, especially at ground level, however if vegetation is dense you may have problems with them laying in places you can't see etc. But they will probably return it to really good grass faster than anything else with the right numbers. Their gut will kill seeds where ruminants will spread them. Docs for example. With a really good high stock fence and some electric, goats tear into pretty much anything too. Both need shelter as mentioned.
 

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