Tippecanoe County, IN Animal Ordinances: Chickens & Livestock (2026)

The Unified Zoning Ordinance's miscellaneous restrictions chapter treats a small personal horse herd differently from a horse business. Section 4-11-2(f) makes keeping up to two horses owned by the property's own occupant an accessory use, meaning no separate acreage threshold or land-use petition applies just because the animals are on a residential lot. Cross that line and the use is reclassified: 4-11-2(d) says boarding, breeding, training and riding horses can be accessory to a residential development only if it sits on at least five acres within that development and is limited to that development's own residents, and 4-11-2(e) extends the same five-acre floor to any property where the horse facility is the primary use rather than an accessory.

The ordinance does not set a numeric cap on backyard chickens or other poultry kept by a resident. The only numeric livestock trigger in the UZO is the Confined Feeding Operation definition at section 1-10, where one animal unit equals 100 fowl, 2 swine or sheep, or 1 cow, steer or bull, and a Confined Feeding Operation is a concentration of more than 300 animal units. Only once a flock or herd crosses that threshold does the section 4-4-9 setback table for confined feeding operations come into play; a small residential flock stays outside both the CFO rules and the horse-specific accessory-use text.

Boarding, breeding or grooming of animals other than horses and farm animals is instead governed separately by section 4-11-3, which requires soundproofed interior boarding areas and no exterior boarding facilities in commercial zones, and in rural zones sets a 200-foot lot-line setback for non-soundproofed exterior areas versus 75 feet for soundproofed buildings, on a 2-to-5-acre lot depending on hours of confinement.