O/T Acre measurment

Devin Sparks · Jul 26, 2008

How do you measure an acre? I have a farm that I will be doing some custom work on like planting food plots and spraying with round up. The owner wants different fields tilled up but not the whole field. I will be charging by the acre. Trying to find out how to measure this so neither one of us gets done in.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 26, 2008

43,560 sq. ft. in an acre

greenbeanman in Kansas · Jul 26, 2008

For smaller total acreages that need some real accuracy I find using square footage best with an acre being 43,560 square feet.

Some prefer to measure in rods, others in chains.
A rod is 16½ feet long while a surveyor's chain is 4 rods long, i.e. 66 feet long.

A rod by a half mile equals an acre.

steveormary · Jul 26, 2008

66'x 660' = 43560sq.ft. will give you an acre.

steveormary

Bill(Wis) · Jul 26, 2008

Use the aforementioned measuring advice if you can. Irregular shapes and sizes can be difficult. It might be easier to contact your local FSA office. They should have aerial photos with acreage measurements of every farm field in the county. Once a year, as regular as clockwork, I get aerial photos of my farm with acreage displayed to the hundreths. Highly accurate, too.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 26, 2008

208'BY 208' EQUALS APPROX ONE ACRE.

ldj · Jul 26, 2008

Devin,
Unless he has just bought or started this operation, I would be leary of him. He knows or should know the acres. When he plants, fertilizes, or anything, he has to know how much he is doing or else he can't calibrate. If he is doing it with by gosh an estimate, he probably won't have good results which you will get blamed for.

junklover · Jul 26, 2008

How about this.. You've got a 100 x 100 ft piece of land. That is 10,000 sq ft. it would take a perimeter of 400 feet of fence around it. Change that to 25 x 400 that's still 10,000 square feet but it now has 900 foot of fence around it. If you were asked to spray a perimeter fence on a piece of land I think shape matters more than acerage.

junklover · Jul 26, 2008

Sorry, that's 850 feet of fence

Bob85355 · Jul 26, 2008

Irregular shapes are a problem. A college professor told me a bunch of years ago that the way to find the area is to break that large irregular shape into smaller pieces. Its not complex, just a bit tedious.

Sum up all the different plots by area and then divide by 43560 and you got acres.

Bob
Central Arizona

paul · Jul 26, 2008

Can you switch that to being charged by the hour? You might have a lot of extra twiddle-dee work here.....

Then you should know what it costs you by the hour.

--->Paul

Anonymous-0 · Jul 26, 2008

Sounds like too manny little plots to fool with an acre charge. Can you afford to hookup, unhook, move implements, driving time, fuel etc etc to charge by the acre on small plots? Charge by the hour. And be specific, so no hard feelings evolve. Tom

Fergienewbee · Jul 26, 2008

When I measured my food plots for fertilizer, seed, etc. I used a walking measuring wheel, then divided the area by 43680--the square feet in an acre. A plot 100 x 300 is around 2/3 arce.

The Missouri Conservation Department recommends 150# of 12-12-12 per 1/4 acre with a yield of 25 bu/acre for corn.

Larry in Michigan

GordoSD · Jul 26, 2008

Garmin sells an inexpensive (80$ ebay) hand held GPS unit. It's the GPS 72 unit. Just turn it on, ride or walk around the perimeter of any shape, and you can get the area in acres. Also a little map.

Gordo

Anonymous-0 · Jul 26, 2008

That is not the number of square feet per acre per any documents that I have seen. Where did you come up up that figure? Tom

El Toro · Jul 26, 2008

I think it should be 43560 sq. feet in an acre. Hal

Mark-Mi · Jul 26, 2008

Length x width divided by 43560 = acreage

Anonymous-0 · Jul 26, 2008

Devin,
You would be foolish to do a job like this by the acre. Small plots and "dead time" manuevering will eatup as much machine time as doing 5 times as much in a big open field. The acreage needs to be figured for spray rates, otherwise charge by time, from when you start your tractor at home until it is back in your yard. Your county ASCS can give you rental rates for your area.

showcrop · Jul 26, 2008

I always do like Bill says ,just go to FSA office find it on the ariels and have them measure for me.

sammyd · Jul 26, 2008

I suppose the number you would like to use would depend on if you're buying or selling the acres..........

43,560 is the number I've always seen used.

chuck t · Jul 26, 2008

Get on Google Earth. On the toolbar is a way to measure distance in a straight line. You have to do a math conversiuon from miles to yards or feet. It is fairly accurate, I measured a football field and it measure at about 104 yards.

trucker40 · Jul 26, 2008

An acre is 11 rows 36 inches apart 1/4 mile long.You could say 10 rows,but you would have to measure from the center of each row that you start and stop with,so 10,36inch rows center before and center past is 43,560 square feet.Or 11 rows,row to row.I could be wrong.Any other row widths and I dont know.I think the actual feet would be 33 ft wide by 1320 ft long,but say 20 inch rows would be about 19 for an acre.If you have rows shorter than 1/4 mile,and you have to turn all the time,its going to take more spray,but I dont know how much more.The shape of the field might make a difference too.The longer you can run a machine set right without having to slow down and stop,turn,the better coverage you are going to get as long as it works right.When you slow down it starts changing the rate,putting more on than you need probably,so in a small field you will put more on than a field thats mostly straight and long.

O/T Acre measurment

Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

New User

New User

Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Member

Member

Well-known Member

Similar threads