Sampson County, NC Animal Ordinances: Pet Limits (2026)

Unlike many North Carolina counties, Sampson County's animal-control ordinance does not set a numeric ceiling on how many dogs and cats a resident of the unincorporated county may keep at one property. Section 4-1-02.Q handles the topic by deferring to two other sources of authority instead of writing its own number. First, subsection (a) says that if the applicable zoning regulations for a given area are more restrictive about keeping pets, cats or animals than this section, those zoning rules control and may restrict how many cats and dogs are allowed in that zoning district.

That means a household in a zoning district with its own animal-density standard could still face a cap, just not one written into the Animal Control chapter itself. Second, subsection (b) makes clear the county ordinance does not take away a landlord's separate right to impose restrictive limits on the number of pets a tenant may keep on leased premises, so a lease can cap pet counts even where county and zoning law do not. In practice, a resident who wants to know whether there is a hard limit on their dogs and cats has to check their property's zoning classification and any lease terms rather than a single county-wide number, because § 4-1-02.Q by itself imposes none.

The rest of Chapter 4-1's general requirements, such as rabies vaccination, nuisance-animal rules and shelter conditions, still apply regardless of how many animals a household keeps.