Here's an example of how to decipher the laws in your area based on my experience with the Ingham County backyard chicken amendment. The same information should hold for dairy goats since both chickens and goats are considered as “livestock”.
Ingham County recently made an amendment to the Animal Control Ordinance legalizing the keeping of backyard poultry on non-agricultural land within the county. However, the ordinance is still somewhat confusing because there is a “small catch” that I have bolded below. The ordinance reads as follows:
“(a) No livestock or poultry shall be owned, kept, possessed, harbored or kept charge of within the boundaries or any non-agricultural area within Ingham County except as such places are provided for shipping said livestock or poultry.
(b) Notwithstanding paragraph (a), and unless expressly prohibited or regulated by a city, village or township ordinance, or private property restriction, chickens may be owned, kept, possessed, harbored, and kept charge of within the boundaries of any non-agricultural area within Ingham County...”
So basically, paragraph (a) states the original ordinance. Part (b) was added later to make an exception to part (a) and allow backyard chickens. However, the part about being “expressly prohibited by a city” means that you still can't have chickens in Ingham county if your city prohibits them. Keep in mind that the word “expressly” is defined as “specifically”, “explicitly”, or “with specific intentions”.
To check if your city allows livestock, you can look up the municipal code. Under the zoning section, you will likely see a list of “permitted uses” for each zoning type. For example, the Lansing municipal code lists the following permitted uses for residential zones:
a) A one-family dwelling;
b) A public park and playground;
c) A family day care home.
...And that's it! Can you believe the list is so short?
As you can see, any permutation of “the keeping of livestock” is not listed under the permitted uses. And in theory, you are not allowed to do anything that is not specifically permitted! Of course, you'll also notice that the permitted uses does not mention the keeping of dogs, cats, goldfish, or vegetable gardens either, and obviously those things are not illegal!
Getting back to my point...to my knowledge there is nowhere in the Lansing municipal code that expressly (there's that word again) prohibits the keeping of chickens (or goats). In fact, the word "chicken" (or "goat") is not found anywhere in the municipal code. Since Lansing does not have a specific chicken-prohibition ordinance, I'm assuming that citizens can defer to the Ingham County ordinance.
But there's still another catch! If the city of Lansing chooses to create a specific ordinance outlawing urban chickens sometime in the future, the Lansing ordinance will trump the Ingham County ordinance. So at the moment, chicken keeping is legal in Lansing, but this could change in the future. That would really stink if you spent a lot of money on a chicken coop, enclosure, feed, and animals, only to have it outlawed a little ways down the road. However, I can't imagine that outlawing chickens is high on the priority list down at city hall!
If you are completely confused at this point, here's a quick summary:
- Keeping chickens in the city of Lansing is not allowed because keeping livestock is not a permitted use of residential land.
- Ingham County made an ordinance to allow backyard chickens in all of Ingham county, unless a city has a specific ordinance against chickens.
- Since Lansing does not have a specific ordinance set in place to prohibit chickens, we can defer to the country ordinance, which says chickens are legal.
- If the city of Lansing wishes to outlaw chickens, they may do so at any point by creating a specific ordinance. Why would they go to the bother of doing this? I don't know, but it could happen!
P.S. I'm not a lawyer and I may have misinterpreted some of the details, so don't bet your life on what I'm saying!
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