Muncie, IN Animal Ordinances: Chickens & Livestock (2026)

Section 90.19 prohibits a person occupying property "zoned under Title XV, section 150, of the zoning code, as R-1, R-2, R-3, R-4, R-5, or R-6 residence zones" from keeping or harboring any livestock or poultry on that property. Subsection (A) defines livestock for this purpose as all cattle or bovine-species animals, all horses, mules, burros and asses or equine-species animals, all swine or porcine-species animals, all goats or caprine-species animals, and all poultry, so backyard chickens are swept into the same residential ban as cattle or hogs regardless of flock size.

A companion rule at § 90.20 applies the identical zoning-based ban to undomesticated animals, covering species that "usually live in the wild," in the same R-1 through R-6 districts. Outside the zoning-specific ban, § 90.18 separately makes it unlawful citywide to let a horse, mule, bull, goat, sheep or swine run at large, and § 90.21 makes it unlawful anywhere in the city to let chickens or other fowl run at large, placing an affirmative duty on every owner or custodian to confine fowl to their premises.

Because § 90.19 is keyed to the joint Delaware-Muncie Metropolitan Plan Commission's residential zoning districts rather than a citywide rule, a property zoned outside R-1 through R-6, such as an agricultural or industrial district, is not covered by this particular ban, though the free-roaming prohibitions in §§ 90.18 and 90.21 still apply everywhere in the city regardless of zoning.