Spiveyman,
Beautiful picture!!!! She's a cutey.
I can relate to your motivation, as mine is very similar. I like to build things and work on the land, but for me, the real pleasure is in making Steph and the kids happy. By nature, I'm lazy and tend to procrastinate. If it wasn't for them, nothing would get done and I'd spend all my free time relaxing and getting fat.
Getting into the world of hireing dozers is about as tricky as they come. It's one of those trades thats ripe with thieves, liers and outright crooks. In no other area have I seen so many problems as hiring a guy to move dirt.
A few things to consider before hiring anybody.
Get multiple bids and be sure you are comparing apples to apples. Pricing is either gonna be hourly, or for the job. Both have there disadvantages. Hourly can drag it on forever and keep running up a bill. Bidding the entire job doesn't gurantee that it will get done for that price, but it might mean that corners are cut to get it done and get out of there.
I prefer hourly myself as I can keep an eye on what's happening and see right off if I'm being taken advantage of. For smaller projects when I hire somebody, it's usualy the price for the job, but that's just the way it is in home construction.
Then be sure you agree up front to what hours you are paying for. It's very common to charge hours for down time, maintenance time and repairs. You don't want to pay for this. Also be sure they are honest in their hours. I've had problems with guys starting at one time, but billing for an earlier time, or just saying they worked 8 hours that day and it wasn't even close to that.
Rates vary all over the place, but here, you can hire a small, 80hp tractor and operator for around $80 an hour. This is way too small for what you want to do, but just a starting point. A D6 sized dozer will run in the low $100's an hour and probably charge a delivery fee of $200 to $400. A bigger dozer, like a D8 is about the same to deliver as a D6, but will run another $40 to $50 an hour to hire.
The huge difference is that the D8 will move twice as much dirt as the D6. You pay a little more per hour, but you get twice the work out of it. Sometimes it's more like three times the work depending on machines and blades.
Be upfront with everyone you talk to. How much dirt is the dozer rated for? What size machine and how old is it? Older machines still work fine, but they tend to break down more often and it might take months to get it fixed. You don't want a dozer sitting around for months on your land with nothing getting done!!!
Track loaders and dump trucks will move dirt over greated distance faster and cheaper then a dozer, but I don't think that's what you need in your area. A belly scraper is the fastest way to move dirt, but again, you need to be moving it over some distance to be effective.
If you talk to a guy who has all these tools, he's probably gonna be able to go in and get it done really fast. In this case, a bid price is the way to go.
Also make sure you know how much dirt you will be moving. Measure it out, do the math and go into this with as much info as you can. If it's a hundred thousand yards, you need to know that beforehand so you can compare the bid price with an hourly rate.
Some guys will also charge by the yard. This complicates things since there is so much gray area when figuring yards to build a dam. The bigger the dam, the stronger it is, but also the nicer looking it is. This is more money to move more dirt, so you have to know where to draw the line.
When you figure it all out and what it will cost, you might consider buying a large dozer. I paid $25,000 for my dozer and have another ten grand into it with a new engine and hydralic pump. I can't even guess right now what I have into it in fuel and oil, but it's probably close to another seven grand. So I have either $40,000 plus into my lake, or when I sell my dozer, I have what's left over after deducting the sales price. Of course, I've also put a couple thousand hours on the dozer using it on other things and will be using it for anoher few thousand hours at least. To build a pond, the general rule of thumb that I came across was $5,000 to $8,000 per acre of water. My situation was different since my dam is over 900 feet long and that price was closer to twice as much. I built my dam three times thicker then it needed to be, so that would have increased the price allot more too. My guess is that if I'd hired it out, I would have spent $60,000 to have it done, maybe more. I couldn't afford that. I really couldn't afford what I have into it, but somehow, it all worked out.
Eddie
Hmmmm.... Out here they only seem willing to put in watering tanks fed by city water. That would be awesome if they'd help with that. Although, they might think a 12 acre lake would be a bit overkill for providing water for my cattle. 
