Bay County, MI Animal Ordinances: Chickens & Livestock (2026)

802 of the Animal Control Ordinance (Part 50, Article VIII) makes it unlawful for any owner of poultry or livestock to allow or permit those animals to run at large upon public highways or rights-of-way, or on the private property of others. 200(n) to include horses, sheep, bulls, cows, mules, goats, hogs and fur-bearing animals raised in captivity, excluding dogs and cats. 200(s) as domestic fowl and game birds possessed or reared under a breeder's license issued under Michigan's Act 191 of 1929. The section addresses only animals running loose off the owner's property; it does not regulate how many chickens or livestock a resident may keep, coop setbacks or zoning district permissions, because Bay County repealed its own zoning ordinance and that authority sits with the township, village or city where the property is located.

701, lets any person, including a law enforcement officer, kill a dog seen pursuing, worrying, wounding or attacking livestock or poultry without civil liability, underscoring that the ordinance's livestock protections run in the other direction as well: against loose dogs threatening farm animals.