How much land does my place actually have?
The contract said “about five acres”. The title says exactly. Type your address and we’ll pull the surveyed boundary from the state register, draw it over the satellite, and tell you what that much grass will roughly feed.
Where the boundary comes from
Not guessed from the picture. Every title in Queensland and New South Walesis a surveyed polygon in a public register, and that is what gets drawn — the same lookup the app runs for a signed-in owner. It is the outer boundary of the title, so the house, sheds and dam are inside it. Internal fences aren’t on any register; those you draw, which takes about two minutes on a map you recognise.
Other states, and the United States, don’t yet publish parcels in a form we can read. The address still finds the place, and once you’re signed up you can trace the boundary by hand and get the same area and the same weekly plan.
How much land does one animal need?
A rough guide, not advice. The real number depends on your rainfall, your soil, what pasture you have and how much you're prepared to hand-feed — and every one of these departments says to check it against the paddock, not the table.
The departments of primary industries all use the same yardstick: each animal is a number of dry sheep equivalents (one DSE is a 50 kg wether at maintenance), and a hectare of improved, unirrigated pasture on decent soil feeds about 6 to 10 DSE a year with basic pasture care. Divide one by the other and you get this.
| Animal | DSE each | Land per animal | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Horses (a light horse, about 450 kg)NSW DPI's own rule of thumb for small holdings is one horse per hectare on reasonable pasture, two on highly improved irrigated pasture, and half a horse per hectare on poor pasture. | 10 | 1–1.7 ha2.5–4.1 acres | NSW DPI, Primefact 932 — Planning for horse establishments |
| Ponies (about 250 kg)Ponies founder on lush pasture more readily than they starve on poor pasture. More grass is not always the kinder answer. | 6 | 0.6–1 ha1.5–2.5 acres | NSW DPI, Primefact 932 — Planning for horse establishments |
| Cattle (a cow with a calf at foot, about 425 kg)Smaller breeds such as Dexter and Lowline are rated at about 4 DSE, so the same paddock carries roughly twice as many. | 10 | 1–1.7 ha2.5–4.1 acres | WA DPIRD — Grazing guidelines for rural small holdings (Table 2, animal equivalents) |
| Sheep (a ewe, allowing for her lamb) | 1.5 | 0.15–0.25 ha0.37–0.62 acres | WA DPIRD — Grazing guidelines for rural small holdings (Table 2, animal equivalents) |
| Goats (a dry milking-breed doe, 50–60 kg)Goats browse as much as they graze, and the fence matters more than the area. | 1.5 | 0.15–0.25 ha0.37–0.62 acres | WA DPIRD — Grazing guidelines for rural small holdings (Table 2, animal equivalents) |
| Alpacas (60–70 kg)Soft-padded, so gentler on the soil than hooves — one reason the rating is low for their size. | 0.8 | 0.08–0.13 ha0.2–0.33 acres | WA DPIRD — Grazing guidelines for rural small holdings (Table 2, animal equivalents) |
Irrigated or highly improved pasture carries more; sandy, steep or shaded country carries a lot less. Count only the ground they can actually graze — not the house yard, the dam or the bush.
Knowing the area is the first question. The app answers the next fifty.
What to do on your place this week, from your weather and your animals — worming that’s due, a frost tonight, the best burn window, the plants in your paddock that hurt horses. Every animal’s history kept, ready to hand to the vet.