Welcome to Farm Rules. In this series we talk about the rules and regulations that small farmers have to follow in order to keep animals, raise crops and sell products from this farm. We post on this topic in our podcast, our youtube channel and here on the blog. For an index of available episodes, please check out this page. We also occasionally post tidbits on Instagram.
As a note: this advice is meant as a starting point for your research into local rules and regulations. These vary wildly from state to state, and even between neighboring towns. Talk to your local authorities when you have questions about the specifics, many are glad to help.
This post is the first in a three part series on keeping chickens. This first video is about keeping chickens as pets and for eggs for personal consumption. The second video will be about selling your eggs. The third will be about selling live poultry.
Chickens are one of the few farm animals that can really be kept almost anywhere. People raise them on rooftops in cities and have them sharing a barn space with other livestock. They are inexpensive, attractive and can provide your family with a vegetarian food source.
They can also be loud, smelly, and generate a fair share of excrement. Unfortunately not everyone wants chickens as their neighbors.
The first step to keeping chickens is to find out if you are allowed to keep chickens. Whether you have owned your home for a while or are looking to purchase a new piece of land you will want to check two things: Zoning Ordinances and Covenants on your property.
Zoning Ordinances
Zoning ordinances are the rules your town sets out determining which activities may be performed on which properties within the town. This ensures that the farm next door does not turn into a box factory overnight, but also can limit the activities you may perform on your property. But it also means we need to be mindful of our own placement within the zone. We may live next to a giant dairy farm and still be in a zone that does not allow us to have chickens.
Many towns will have the zoning maps available online, but if they are not you need to go to the Town Hall. I would search online for the town in question (make sure to include the state) with zoning map or zoning ordinance map.
Find the property in question to determine in which zone it has been identified. Then you will want to go to the town ordinances to find out what the general definition of the zone is.
Generally the town use ordinance will also spell out the specific uses allowed in different zones within a table that defines if the activity is inherently permitted, never permitted, requires a permit from the Code Enforcement Officer or requires permission from a planning authority. If the activity is not inherently permitted, be sure to do additional research into what it takes to obtain a permit. Some may be as simple as providing a site plan as to where your animals will be kept and where manure will be disposed of.
Another interesting aspect of zoning is that your property may have two zones within it. The house and surrounding 2 acres may be zoned residential, but the back two acres may fall under agricultural zone.
Most towns have a process for adjusting the zone in which your property falls, but this process is usually costly in time and money. The town I live in now requires $300 for the application and requires multiple public meetings be held before approval is granted.
Covenants
Covenants are even harder than zoning to research. Covenants are a contract that is attached to your home which are an agreement within a certain neighborhood or subdivision. You may get a copy of the covenants when you are working with a real estate agent to purchase the house. The hardest part about covenants is that unless you have a home owners association, they may be loosely enforced. Every other person on your street could have chickens, and your neighbor could sue you for breech of contract because he’s had enough of your noisy rooster.
At the same time, covenants can be useful if they specifically allow you to have chickens on the property. So it’s important to read your paperwork if you fall under covenants.
Other considerations
So you’ve checked your zoning and your covenants and you are ready to go right? Not so fast, did you check the rules about owning a Rooster? A lot of communities put additional restrictions on owning a noisy but beautiful protector bird.
Also be sure to check if there’s any limits on how many chickens you have before your property is considered a commercial chicken farm. You don’t want to find out that 50 adorable bantams running around your yard has now violated property restrictions.
Now we are set, we know what and how many chickens we are allowed to have on our property, we have a backup plan for any “bonus roosters”. Ready to build our coop and pen, and go buy our chickens. One more thing to check in your town’s webpage (I swear I’m not trying to overload their server). Make sure that the size coop you will be building does not require a building permit. Some towns don’t require permits for anything under a certain size. Others require a permit for a small rabbit hutch. It’s useful to find out before the code ordinance officer shows up at your doorstep.
And in closing, find out what your state requires as a minimum purchase quantity . Chickens are social animals, they need buddies to keep them warm at night and safe from predators. Some states may require a minimum of 12 birds, others only require 3. Either way, you don’t want to stuff 12 birds into a coop designed for 6. So it’s worth looking into.
Looking for more information on local rules and regulations? Check out the resources at your State’s Cooperative Extension.
I hope you found some valuable information within this posts. Join us in future installments to talk about selling your chickens eggs and later selling live birds and chicken meat. If there’s any small farm topics you would like me to cover from a rules and regulation standpoint, please let me know.