Champaign County, IL Animal Ordinances: Chickens & Livestock (2026)

Backyard poultry is settled and welcome in the twin cities. The City of Champaign and the City of Urbana each permit up to six hens, ban roosters, and require a $25 annual coop license, with coops kept in the rear yard and set back from property lines. Larger livestock such as goats, horses, and cattle belong in the surrounding unincorporated county, overwhelmingly corn-and-soybean farmland where keeping livestock is an ordinary agricultural use under the Champaign County Zoning Ordinance. Owners must still keep animals from running at large; the county animal-control ordinance treats a companion animal or livestock loose in an unincorporated area as a nuisance subject to impoundment.