Can you keep chickens in Township of Barnegat, NJ?

The rules at a glance

Good to know

• The one-acre rule is a permitted use in the PW, R-40, RL, RL/AC, RM and PF zones and a conditional use in the R-20 zone.
• The code does not define farm animal, and there is no separate chapter on keeping chickens.
• Commercial farms raising livestock and poultry for gain need at least 5 acres, with buildings and manure at least 200 feet from adjoining property lines.
• Searched the Barnegat code for chicken, chickens, poultry and fowl; no backyard hen section came back.

What about ducks?

Only on larger lots. Barnegat's zoning allows one farm animal for domestic use on a lot of at least one acre, plus one per added acre, and that rule reaches ducks the same way it reaches chickens.

§ 55-10A(14); § 55-11C(4): "Raising and keeping of a farm animal for domestic use on a lot having not less than one (1) acre. Additional farm animals shall not exceed one (1) per every one (1) additional acre." Duck coops we build.

Building a coop in Township of Barnegat?

Triano Farms builds custom, predator-proof chicken coops on-site across Ocean County and all of New Jersey, sized to your flock and built to your town's rules.

In an HOA? The town allowing hens is not the same as your association allowing them. What an HOA can and cannot stop.

New to this? Start with how to raise chickens in NJ, or what a coop costs.