Can you keep chickens in Township of Elk, NJ?

The rules at a glance

Good to know

• Large animals need two acres beyond the residential building lot area; small animals need 50 percent of that.
• Fencing or grazing land is exempt from the 75-foot rule, but coops and other animal structures are not.
• Chickens, ducks, geese, guinea hens, peacocks and turkeys all count as livestock in the animal control chapter.
• Wherever livestock is kept, a fence at least four feet high and strong enough to hold them is required.
• Commercial piggeries and swine farms are banned township-wide.

What about ducks?

Ducks follow the same rule as chickens. Elk's code lists ducks with chickens as livestock and poultry, which need about an acre of land beyond the house lot, with any coop 75 feet from residential property lines.

§ 96-46; § 60-23: "all chickens, ducks, geese, guinea hens, peacocks, turkeys, emus, rheas, and all other poultry and fowl" Duck coops we build.

Building a coop in Township of Elk?

Triano Farms builds custom, predator-proof chicken coops on-site across Gloucester 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.