Glenn County, CA Animal Ordinances: Chickens & Livestock (2026)

020, the FA zone's list of permitted uses, treats livestock farming and backyard fowl keeping as ordinary rural land uses that need no conditional use permit or administrative permit of their own; the section lists "livestock farming, including the raising, feeding, maintaining and breeding of horses, cattle, sheep, goats and similar livestock" right alongside crop growing, logging and home occupations as uses the FA zone allows outright. Fowl and small-animal keeping gets its own setback standard within the same list: "the keeping of fowl and animals shall conform to all other provisions of law governing same," and no coop, pen, stable, barn or corral built for them can sit within fifty feet of any dwelling or other building used for human habitation.

The setback grows to one hundred feet measured from the front lot line of the parcel where the pen sits, drops to twenty-five feet from the street side of a corner lot, and extends to one hundred feet from any parcel used as a public park, school or similar institution. These distances apply on top of, not instead of, any other law governing the keeping of fowl or animals, such as the county's separate animal-control and health provisions. The FA zone is one of several agricultural zoning districts in unincorporated Glenn County, established in part "to provide areas for extensive agricultural activities" and to protect timberland suited for logging, so parcel sizes there tend to run large: the zone allows only one single-family dwelling or mobilehome per 160 acres.