Burlington, WI Animal Ordinances: Pet Limits (2026)

Section 104-10 opens with the Common Council's own findings: keeping an unlimited number of dogs and cats detracts from and is detrimental to a healthful, comfortable community, and it declares the practice a public nuisance outright. Subsection B then sets the operative limit: no person may keep more than five dogs or five cats within the City. The section carves out one age-based exception: a litter of pups or a litter of kittens, or part of a litter, may be kept beyond the five-animal cap for up to five months from the date of birth, after which the young animals count toward the limit like any other pet.

The cap does not apply to an establishment that keeps dogs or cats for breeding, sale, sporting purposes or boarding, but any such operation must instead comply with the Chapter 104 kennel rules, § 104-12's ban on commercial bird-and-animal keeping, and Chapter 315, Zoning. Subsection C sets a distance rule for kennels specifically: in areas where a kennel, as defined in Wis. 40(1)(e), is permitted, no kennel may be located closer than 100 feet to the boundary of the nearest adjacent residential lot. Because the five-animal cap sits in the general Animals chapter rather than the Zoning Code, it applies City-wide regardless of the underlying zoning district, on top of whatever the property's zoning otherwise allows.