Osceola County, FL Right to Farm: Agricultural Zoning Protection (2026)

Osceola County's animal-keeping ordinance draws an explicit line between agriculturally zoned and non-agriculturally zoned land. Section 4-30(b) states that agriculturally zoned properties inside the urban growth boundary used for legitimate agricultural practices, including the raising, breeding, selling, and transporting of cattle or poultry, are subject to their own animal limitation requirements rather than the residential rules in subsection (a). On agricultural parcels, dogs are still capped at four and cats at eight, but the ordinance permits up to two swine per parcel (beyond the two potbellied pigs allowed everywhere), each requiring a pen or opaque enclosure at least one hundred feet from the property boundary that is accessory to the dwelling. Section 4-30(d) extends the same two-swine allowance to agriculturally zoned parcels outside the urban growth boundary. None of this agricultural carve-out exists for non-agriculturally zoned lots, where subsection (a) bans cattle, sheep, and swine other than potbellied pigs outright, regardless of lot size.

The code also recognizes bona fide farm operations elsewhere: Section 9-91, in the fertilizer and landscape article, exempts bona fide farm operations as defined in the Florida Right to Farm Act, F.S. § 823.14, and other properties with pastures used for grazing livestock, from the county's turf fertilizer application rules that otherwise bind every property owner in the unincorporated county. Together, these provisions mean a working farm on agriculturally zoned land in Osceola County answers to a distinct set of animal-count and land-management rules than a subdivision lot a mile away, even though both sit inside the same urban growth boundary.