Worcester County, MD Animal Ordinances: Chickens & Livestock (2026)

Section ZS 1-349 regulates poultry operations in unincorporated Worcester County, Maryland. A poultry housing unit is a single poultry house with a gross floor area of forty-four thousand square feet or less. Operations are ranked by how many housing units a farm holds and whether it uses tunnel ventilation: small is one housing unit without tunnel ventilation, medium is two to four housing units or one unit with tunnel ventilation, and large is five to eight housing units. The maximum on any one parcel or lot is eight housing units, and poultry operations are allowed only where specifically permitted and in strict conformance with the section.

Buffers scale with size. Small operations need no buffer. A medium operation needs one only for tunnel-ventilated houses, within an area of influence running forty-five degrees either side of the fan's axis of rotation and starting not less than fifty feet from the fan's discharge point. A large operation needs a buffer on all sides. Where required, a buffer has not less than three staggered rows spaced not less than ten nor more than twenty feet apart, with the third row all evergreen trees and spacing between trees in a row of six to fourteen feet. Species come from the Delmarva Poultry Industry's VEB Tool-Kit dated June 2007, and dead, dying or diseased plants must be replaced promptly.

All structures associated with a poultry operation sit at least two hundred feet from the front, side and rear lot lines. Operations lawfully built and in bona fide commercial production before the section was adopted can be rebuilt or replaced without meeting these requirements if the poultry company or integrator certifies the production in writing on Department forms, the total gross floor area stays at or below what existed at adoption, and rebuilt housing units sit no closer to a property line than before.

For scale, § ZS 1-103 defines a poultry house by the commercial raising of fifty or more chickens, turkeys, pheasants, ducks or similar fowl at any one time, and defines a livestock handling or containment area as space for three or more head of livestock kept for commercial breeding, feeding or boarding or for experimentation.