Is this ordinance unfair? I need advice!

[4 Georgia Hens]

Hello everyone! Recently I have been a lot of research about my county’s ordinances. We have been legally (with a few exceptions) keeping chickens for almost 4 years. After all of this time, we have started to really want to begin growing our “farm”. After doing some digging, I found out what is actually allowed. Essentially, every single-family residential home is allowed 1 Vietnamese Pot-Bellied pig. For us to have any swine (other than the VPB), fowl (other than backyard chickens), goats, or any other livestock, we need at least 2 acres and than it is 1 animal per acre. This seems a little bit unreasonable to me. We want to have a few quail and a few ducks but it is not allowed. Do y’all think that it would be worth it or even wise to try and change the ordinance? These laws have confused everyone that we have shared them with. It doesn’t make sense why a large pig is allowed but not even quail! Or even a dwarf goat! What do y’all think we should do? Does it seem to be a reasonable ordinance?
Oh, and one more thing:
For us to legally have more than 8 chickens, we have to have 8 acres and than it is 1 chickens per acre. Isn’t that crazy?

Ps. We are outside the city limits and we have 1 acre.

 

[wyoDreamer]

It sounds like someone already got the ordinances changed so they could have their pet pig - ergo, that would be why a VPB is allowed, but no other pigs. Pot-bellied pigs were the "fad" pet there for a while.
So there may be wiggle room for you to get changes to the ordinances, but I can guarantee it would be a heck of a battle.
Do you have a well and septic system on Your property?

One acre is not a lot of room once you figure in house footprint, driveways, set-back requirements, housing for the animal, and room for the animal to move around (pen). Then comes the question of what are you going to do with the animal waste that is produced? How are you going to control the animal sounds, smells and waste so it doesn't impact the neighbors?

In my opinion, 1 acre lots are suburbia, not country life. My parents have a 1 1/2 acre lot, as do all their neighbors. I can't imagine having livestock on their lot, let alone a lot that is only one acre. In fact, I would probably fight an ordinance change in that circumstance (I know that statement will not make me many friends on this forum. Sorry) Maybe quail, rabbits or pigeons, would be reasonable use. But I have too much experience with lousy neighbors to open the can of worms of goats, sheep, mini-cows, llamas, etc.

 

[PirateGirl]

This is on par with a lot of ordinances I have seen. It has to do with a few things. One is protecting vegetation, the other is protecting our ground water (in terms of contamination from waste as well as how much is being used). You may be able to have a change where instead of just chickens the wording is "small fowl" which is defined to include a few things other than chickens, but unfortunately, I wouldn't expect the number of animals per acre to change. Think if every person with one acre suddenly had 10 pigs each. It would ultimately have a huge impact on the local ecosystem.

The goat/pig thing seems to be a big deal. Areas either are zoned for swine or not, period, having nothing to do with what other animals are permitted.

Then they tend to either be zoned for goats or zoned for sheep, but not both, partly due to the plants they eat, but it also has to do with transmission of disease between goats and sheep. For example, in the wild, there is a disease the mountain goats carry that they can handle, but kills/destroys the bighorn sheep population. If the two species inhabit the same ecosystem, it really messes with the numbers and the balance of things and they really need to live in separate geographic locations. By keeping them separate, both sheep and goat populations are able to thrive.

 

[PirateGirl]

@wyoDreamer has a good point, one completely empty open acre of land is not the same as one that accommodates a house and driveway and utilities and setbacks etc.

 

[Ptera]

One place I lived had a no livestock County zoning rule, but I had a large wooded lot bounded on 3 sides by un-buildable property. I wrote a letter to the County zoning board and made the case that if I had chickens and kept them on the far side of the lot from the only neighbor, they wouldn't be able to see or hear them. I got a letter in reply granting me an exception and a couple weeks later I had a coop and run built & received my box of 25 chicks in the mail! Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances (not chicken related) I had to move from there a year later. Point is, if your circumstances warrant it, try asking for a zoning exception. (It's not fool proof. If some fool later moves in next door & complains it could be rescinded, but it's an option to try).

 

[roosterhavoc]

Hello everyone! Recently I have been a lot of research about my county’s ordinances. We have been legally (with a few exceptions) keeping chickens for almost 4 years. After all of this time, we have started to really want to begin growing our “farm”. After doing some digging, I found out what is actually allowed. Essentially, every single-family residential home is allowed 1 Vietnamese Pot-Bellied pig. For us to have any swine (other than the VPB), fowl (other than backyard chickens), goats, or any other livestock, we need at least 2 acres and than it is 1 animal per acre. This seems a little bit unreasonable to me. We want to have a few quail and a few ducks but it is not allowed. Do y’all think that it would be worth it or even wise to try and change the ordinance? These laws have confused everyone that we have shared them with. It doesn’t make sense why a large pig is allowed but not even quail! Or even a dwarf goat! What do y’all think we should do? Does it seem to be a reasonable ordinance?
Oh, and one more thing:
For us to legally have more than 8 chickens, we have to have 8 acres and than it is 1 chickens per acre. Isn’t that crazy?

Ps. We are outside the city limits and we have 1 acre.

Skip the ducks and get the quail. Sometimes it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

 

[Maugwa]

I wouldn't advocate breaking the law, or ordinances, or anything like that, but I do often. Not with my poultry or anything, I have 20 acres in the country with no ordinances. Let me explain, I'm a mason and around half of the work I do is in a small town nearby. They have a rule that you can't do construction work before 8:00 am, and I get it, and respect it most of the time. However, it's in the 90s and 100s here in late June through August most of the time. Not only is laying block in 100 degree temperatures hard on block layers, but it's even harder to keep your mud nice. We try to go at 5:30 or 6:00 so we can get out of there by 1:00 or 2:00 - Noon if it's too hot. By far most people get it. I make sure all the sawing that we need early is done in the afternoon the day before, put stuff where I don't need my forklift till 8:00, and mix the first few batches with a shovel - we are quiet in the early morning. Town cops even drive by and wave (it's a small town, I know most of them). But every great once in a while, somebody will complain, one of those cops will come to me and apologize for having to tell me what we both know. No tickets or nothing, we just have to finish that one with 8:00 am starts. A week later, the same cop will wave and smile at me at 6:00 am on another street working.

9 acres is a lot of ground for 9 chickens. Were it me, I may look into how bad of crime is it. Do they just tell you "no"?, or is it $100, or $1000? More than likely, the worst that would happen is they tell you some need to go. Do they have an official chicken counter inspecting properties? Then I'd push my luck a little, while working on getting the rules changed. Nothing crazy, but maybe try 15, or a small quail run tucked in somewhere. If you get along with your neighbors, are respectful, clean, and don't get carried away with a big chicken ranch, I'd almost bet nobody complained. I've come to the conclusion, in my experiences at least, that most ordinances aren't really enforced much unless there is a complainer nearby, or somebody goes too far overboard breaking them and becomes a problem neighbor.

 

[HenOnAJuneBug]

This is what happens when too many "city slickers" move to the country. I once looked at a house with 10 acres up in the mountains that had a deed restriction prohibiting chickens. IMO people who do things like that ruin rural communities.

 

[Maugwa]

I knew this old guy once who always had a great big garden in town. His whole backyard was a garden. Every Spring he'd get all of his plants pretty well established, then he'd go to the farm store and get three chicks. He'd raise them in the garden. It was a no chicken town, but he had a 6' privacy fence all around. I'd stop by and give him a hand often, almost always getting more produce than I needed. I remember asking him, "Don't those chicks tear up your garden?" "Not too much when they're little," He'd say, "And, I got more than I need, besides, they'd rather eat bugs than vegetables anyway, except for maybe strawberries and tomatoes, I just figure they can have the tomatoes they can reach, and I'll get cherries off those trees and forget about strawberries". I'll tell you one thing I learned watching his tactics, if there were cabbage loopers around, those chicks were in the cabbage, potato beetles, and they'd be in the potatoes, if a big hopper flew over the fence - the race was on! He never needed poisons. But every fall, one of his chicks, or more, always turned out to be roosters. About the time things were coming to an end in the garden anyway, frost may have come, or was near to, and there weren't as many bugs anymore, his roosters would begin learning how to crow, and one of his neighbors didn't like it (We both knew which neighbor, she had been my algebra teacher once, lol, and we didn't get along anyway). She'd call the cops. They'd show up at his door, and tell him the chickens had to go, so he'd go harvest them too - that was the plan all along haha. Then three new chicks next Spring.

I don't know how you can apply that to your ordinance issues. Maybe just in relation to how severe are the consequences, that's kinda the hing pin to the whole situation, right? If nothing else, just as a new humerus way of thinking of a silly law

One of the chores I was helping that old fellow with, was he had this little camper too. The town also had this law that you couldn't have a camper parked in the same spot on a street without moving it for more than two weeks, but it usually took them a month or more to notice and put a chalk mark on his tire. He'd call, and I'd go grab the hitch and drag it six or eight feet, the next time, I'd roll it back where it was before. Hey, he'd stormed beaches in the South Pacific, and helped McCarther take back the Philippines, I figured it was the least I could do.

 

[rosemarythyme]

What I think is a more reasonable ordinance is to take into account the fact that different animals are different sizes and have differing impact on a lot.

My zoning code has restrictions based on animal units per acre. So that can be 1 large animal like a horse or cow, or 5 smaller animals like goats, per 1 acre. Poultry and rabbits aren't included, those are pretty a much free for all if you have over 1/2 acre.

My guess is the potbelly pig exclusion came at a time when pigs became a trendy pet so someone managed to petition for that change. There's some cities around here that have exclusion for dwarf goats, for example, which are counted as pets and not livestock.