Pasture PathAcreage calculator: measure a field on the map
Find your land, tap the corners of a field, and read off its acres, hectares and the length of fence around it. Free, and nothing to sign up for.
How to measure a field
- Find it. Search for the nearest town or road, type coordinates, or use the locate button if you are standing in it.
- Tap the corners. Go around the edge in order. For a curved fence line or a creek, use several short sides.
- Tidy up. Drag any corner to move it. Tap one of the small dots to add a corner between two others.
- Read the result. Acres, hectares, square feet and square metres, plus the distance around the edge for fencing.
Acres at a glance
| Piece of land | Acres | Hectares |
|---|---|---|
| One acre (43,560 sq ft) | 1 | 0.405 |
| One hectare (10,000 m²) | 2.471 | 1 |
| Legal subdivision (LSD), nominal | 40 | 16.2 |
| Quarter section, nominal | 160 | 64.7 |
| Section (one mile square), nominal | 640 | 259 |
"Nominal" because surveyed parcels are rarely exact: road allowances, correction lines, a creek or a railway all take their share. See how legal land descriptions work.
About measuring land
How do I measure the acreage of a field?
Find the field on the map, then tap each corner in order around its edge. The area appears as soon as there are three corners and updates as you add more. Follow curves with several short sides.
How accurate is it?
The arithmetic is exact to a few parts per million. In practice the answer is as good as your corners: satellite imagery is usually lined up to within a few metres, so a 40-acre field will come out within about one percent. It is a measurement, not a legal survey.
How many acres is a quarter section?
A quarter section is nominally 160 acres: half a mile by half a mile. A full section is 640 acres. Real quarters vary a little because of road allowances and survey corrections, which is one reason to measure the piece you actually farm.
How do I convert acres to hectares?
One acre is 0.4047 hectares; one hectare is 2.471 acres. An acre is 43,560 square feet, or 4,047 square metres. The calculator shows all of these at once.
Can I save or share what I drew?
Download it as a KML file, which opens in Google Earth. To keep your fields, with their crops, grazing and records, make a free Pasture Path account.
More tools, and the app they come from
Stocking rate calculator
How many animals a pasture can carry for a season, in AUMs and in head.
Paddock calculator
How many paddocks a rotation needs and how big each should be.
Rotational grazing in Pasture Path
Keep the rotation on your own map: one-tap moves, rest days on every paddock, the next one suggested.
Keep every field you measure
A free account saves your fields on your own map, with what is growing, who is grazing and what was done there.