How much does bush hogging cost in South Alabama?
Bush hogging around Baldwin and Mobile County generally runs $75 to $150 per acre for open, regularly cut fields, and up toward $250 per acre for thick ground that has missed a few seasons. Smaller or obstructed jobs usually price hourly instead, at roughly $85 to $120 per hour for a tractor and cutter, plus a minimum charge that covers getting the equipment to your property. Where your job lands depends mostly on how long it has been since the ground was last cut — the same factors we walk through on every bush hogging estimate.
The price, by how the job gets quoted
| How it is priced | Typical range | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Per acre, maintained field | $75 to $150 | Open ground cut within the last year |
| Per acre, neglected ground | $150 to $250 | Two or more seasons of growth |
| Hourly, tractor and cutter | $85 to $120 | Small, tight, or obstructed parcels |
| Minimum charge | $150 to $350 | Covers mobilization on small jobs |
Those are regional market ranges, not a quote. A real number comes from walking the ground, because the things that move the price are easy to see in person and easy to miss from the road.
What pushes the number up
Time since the last cut is the big one. Grass and briars cut fast. Ground that has stood through two or three Gulf Coast growing seasons has woody stems that force slower passes, and usually more than one of them. Obstacles are the second driver: stumps, washouts, old fence wire, and wet spots all slow the tractor and add risk to the blades. Slopes and ditch banks price above flat pasture for the same reason.
Around here, the wet season matters too. Saturated ground bogs equipment and tears up instead of cutting clean, so the drier windows cut faster and cheaper. If your field can wait for dry ground, it usually pays to.
The line where bush hogging ends
A rotary cutter is a maintenance tool. It handles grass, weeds, briars, and brush up to about thumb thickness. Once a parcel stands up in saplings and woody growth past that, forcing a bush hog through it chews the result and beats up the machine. That ground needs forestry mulching, which grinds standing brush and small trees into a clean mulch layer and typically prices several times higher per acre than a maintenance cut.
That gap between maintenance money and reclamation money is the whole argument for a cutting schedule. A field cut every spring and fall never gets a vote in the matter.
Fields we cut around here
The typical calls across Baldwin and Mobile County: pastures and hay ground between uses, hunting land and food plot edges, fence lines the woods keep testing, pond banks, pre-sale acreage that needs to show well, and the vacant lot that drew a letter from the city. Elberta, Robertsdale, Loxley, and the farm ground between them keep a machine busy most weeks.
If you want a firm number on your ground, bush hogging quotes are free and we will tell you honestly whether it is a maintenance cut or a land clearing job wearing tall grass as a disguise. Call (251) 747-7839 and we will walk it with you.