Waynesville, MO Animal Ordinances: Chickens & Livestock (2026)

Section 215.240 of the Waynesville Municipal Code treats domesticated farm animals as a distinct, more restricted category from ordinary household pets. Section 215.020 defines a domesticated farm animal as any domesticated animal kept as a work animal, food source or for other agricultural purposes, expressly naming horses, ponies, donkeys, mules, cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, pheasants, and confined hares and rabbits, along with any other animal raised or maintained in confinement. Section 215.240 then draws the zoning line squarely: domesticated farm animals may be kept and maintained within City limits only as provided in Chapter 400, Article II of the Municipal Code, and no domesticated farm animals are allowed at all within areas of the City zoned residential.

That means backyard chickens, ducks or other listed farm fowl are off-limits by definition in a residential zone, regardless of flock size or coop design; the keeping right exists only where the zoning chapter permits it. Hogs and swine get an even tighter gate: Section 215.240 allows them only by special consideration of the Board of Adjustment, a case-by-case approval rather than a use any property owner can claim as of right. The City Animal Control Officer enforces the residential-zone prohibition alongside the Building Inspector and Planning and Zoning Commission, who administer the zoning chapter that actually maps where farm-animal keeping is allowed.

Because the prohibition is zoning-based rather than a blanket City-wide ban, the operative question for any Waynesville property is which zoning district it sits in, not just whether the animal is otherwise domesticated.