Pitt County, NC Animal Ordinances: Chickens & Livestock (2026)

Pitt County's Zoning Ordinance (Ordinance No. 14) opens its Authority section by quoting the state law that controls livestock and poultry keeping here: NCGS 160D-903 exempts property used for bona fide farm purposes from all county zoning regulation, and the Ordinance spells out that bona fide farm purposes cover the production and activities relating or incidental to the production of crops, fruits, vegetables, ornamental and flowering plants, dairy, livestock, poultry, and all other forms of agricultural products having a domestic or foreign market (Section 1).

Table 5-1, the county's Table of Permitted Uses, carries that exemption into its use-by-use chart: 'Agricultural Production (livestock)' (SIC code 0200) and 'Agricultural Production (crops)' (SIC code 0100) are both marked 'E' for Exempt across every one of the county's eleven zoning districts, from the RA Rural Agricultural district through the GI General Industrial district. That means a Pitt County property owner raising backyard chickens, cattle, goats, horses or other farm animals for agricultural production does not need a zoning permit, a site plan, or a special use permit regardless of which district the land sits in, so long as the activity qualifies as a bona fide farm purpose.

The statute draws one hard line, though: Section 1 also warns that the use of farm property for nonfarm purposes is not exempt from zoning regulations, so once poultry or livestock operations shift toward a nonfarm commercial use, such as a for-profit boarding or sales operation, the standard use table and its development standards in Section 8 apply instead. The county's separate Animal Control Ordinance defines 'animal' broadly, as every living vertebrate in the classes Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves and Mammalia, so cruelty, neglect and nuisance provisions in that ordinance still reach poultry and livestock even where zoning does not touch them.