Hartford, CT Animal Ordinances: Chickens & Livestock (2026)

Three back-to-back sections in Chapter 6, "Animals and Fowl," set Hartford's rules for backyard poultry and livestock. Sec. 6-4 makes it "unlawful for any person to keep poultry or pigeons in any location or condition deemed by the director of health to be detrimental to the public health or offensive to the neighborhood." There's no numeric flock cap or coop-setback distance in the text; the health director's case-by-case finding is what triggers the violation, so a complaint-driven inspection, not a permit application, is the practical enforcement point for chickens. Sec. 6-5 separately restricts the retail side: live poultry may only be sold for slaughter at locations the director of health designates, so an ad hoc backyard sale of live birds outside a designated site is itself unlawful. Swine are treated more strictly. Sec. 6-6 requires a permit before keeping swine "in any sty, pen or other place in the city," issued by the bureau of licenses and permits and approved by the director of health; keeping swine without that dual sign-off is a violation regardless of any nuisance finding. All three sections trace to Chapter 5 of the 1977 Code (Secs. 5-4 through 5-6) and rest on the city's home-rule authority to regulate keeping of poultry and domestic animals under G.S. §§ 7-148(c)(7)(D)(ii) and 7-194(36), as the Municipal Code's own state-law references note.

Enforcement and appeal follow Chapter 6's dedicated track. Sec. 6-14 routes any violation of Sec. 6-4, 6-5 or 6-6 to Hartford's community court under Public Act 97-199 rather than the city's standard Sec. 1-5 citation-hearing process, and a superior court judge, not a hearing officer, decides the case.