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Check out ordinances in your area regarding keeping livestock. These govern whether you can keep livestock and restrict the types you can keep. You need to be aware of the ordinances governing your area, or you risk losing the goats that you dreamed of getting just because of a technicality.

A good place to start is with a city planning or zoning department. Make sure to get a copy of the rules or regulations that govern this. Jenny Grant, of the Seattle Justice League, who spearheaded the Seattle effort to allow miniature goats in that city, also recommends that you check with local animal control to determine whether they have the ability to deal with goats.

In some cities, you may need to buy a license for a goat, just as you do for a dog. Another kind of ordinance that you need to be aware of governs noise. In rural areas, animals are expected (as are guns), so neighbors can’t do much legally about a crying goat (or target shooting). But in an urban area, even if goats are allowed, your neighbors may complain, much as they do with a barking dog. Be aware of what your local noise ordinance covers.

In some cases where goats are prohibited by a city or other municipality, people with special needs or medical issues have been able to obtain variances to the zoning so that a goat could serve as a service or therapy animal.

If your city does not allow backyard goats, you’ll need to work with the powers that be to get the law revised, like other urban farmers are doing in cities around the United States. Grant suggests putting together a petition and obtaining signatures and then taking it to the city council and requesting a hearing. If you also obtain email addresses on the petition, you’ll have a ready-made list to notify interested parties when the hearing is scheduled.

Also helpful are recommendations on what should be covered by such an ordinance, such as miniature goats only, a limitation on the number, only does or wethers, and whether they need to be licensed. You can use another city ordinance as a pattern for the one you’re proposing.