North Hempstead, NY Animal Ordinances: Chickens & Livestock (2026)

Town Code § 70-203, the public health, safety and general welfare section of the Zoning Code, addresses backyard livestock in two subsections. Subsection E requires that no accessory building or structure used to house fowl or domestic animals, other than dogs or cats, stand less than 50 feet from any property line; any existing structure that did not meet that setback when the local law was adopted had two years to be removed or relocated into conformity. Subsection F goes further in residential districts: no premises there may be used for keeping, maintaining or harboring pigeons, swine, goats, rabbits, foxes, minks, skunks or other similar furbearing animals, bees, or snakes such as racers, boas, water snakes and pythons, unless the Board of Zoning and Appeals authorizes the use under Article XXIV.

The code also builds in an enforcement shortcut for pigeon-keeping specifically: observing multiple pigeons on a premises on at least three dates within a two-week period, documented by a Town code enforcement officer, creates a rebuttable presumption that the premises is being used in violation of the section, though that presumption does not apply to residential properties abutting industrial or business-zoned land, and failure to rebut it does not by itself require a guilty finding. Chickens are not named individually but fall within "fowl" for the 50-foot setback in Subsection E and are swept into the residential keeping ban of Subsection F only to the extent they qualify as a similar animal the Board would otherwise need to authorize.