Keeping Horses in Douglas County, SD: The Zoning Rules

If you're buying acreage in Douglas County specifically to keep horses, the number that matters most isn't your zoning district -- it's the county ordinance's own definition of a 'hobby farm,' the specific animal count where that definition stops applying, and what kind of review kicks in once you cross it.

This page covers what's specific to Douglas County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

What counts as a 'hobby farm,' and which animals count toward the cap

Douglas County's zoning ordinance defines a "hobby farm" as an accessory activity in rural residential areas that includes planting, cultivating, harvesting, and storage of grains, hay, plants, fruit, or vineyards -- and it separately treats raising livestock or poultry as part of that same hobby-farm use only up to a specific density: two acres or more for every two "large domesticated animals," with a hard cap of ten animals total regardless of acreage. The ordinance's own definitions identify horses, cattle, hogs, and sheep as large domesticated animals for this purpose -- meaning a mixed group (say, four horses and two cows) counts toward the same shared ten-animal ceiling, not separate limits per species.

For a buyer planning specifically for horses, the practical math is straightforward but worth running before you close: a 20-acre parcel comfortably supports the maximum ten animals under the density formula (two acres per two animals means twenty acres covers ten), but a smaller acreage caps you proportionally lower regardless of how many animals your fencing and pasture could actually support. And the cap is a hard ten regardless of acreage size -- buying 80 or 160 acres doesn't raise the ten-animal hobby-farm ceiling; it just means you're using a smaller fraction of the property for that purpose. If your plans start at ten head or fewer, this framework is designed to accommodate you without further permitting. If they don't, read on.

Above ten animals: a different, more involved review process

Once a livestock operation exceeds the hobby-farm density and ten-animal cap, Douglas County's ordinance stops treating it as an agricultural use by right and instead routes it through the ordinance's Animal Feeding Operation (AFO) framework -- defined broadly enough to cover any lot, yard, corral, building, or confined area where animals are stabled or confined for 45 or more days in a 12-month period without sustained crop or forage cover. AFOs are separated into different classes under the ordinance, and even an operation that predates the current ordinance can trigger new review as an "expansion" if it grows by more than 100 animal units -- a threshold defined in terms of animal-unit equivalents rather than a simple headcount, so a horse operation scaling up over several years should ask the Planning and Zoning office to calculate the applicable animal-unit conversion for horses specifically rather than assuming a raw headcount comparison to the hobby-farm limit.

It's worth understanding how much more conservative Douglas County's own line is compared to South Dakota's state-level water-quality permitting for animal feeding operations, which is administered separately by the state Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources. State rules define even the smallest regulated tier -- a 'small' CAFO needing a permit only if the state secretary requires one -- starting around 300 head of cattle, 200 dairy cows, or 750 hogs; the county's own AFO review, by contrast, is already in play at eleven horses. In other words, Douglas County's zoning ordinance regulates far below the scale where state feedlot water-pollution rules would ever come into play -- a small-acreage horse buyer should think of this as a purely local, county-administered land-use question, not something that will also trigger a state DANR feedlot permit unless the operation grows dramatically larger than what most horse-property buyers are planning.

Horse Property in Douglas County, South Dakota

What counts as a 'hobby farm,' and which animals count toward the cap

Above ten animals: a different, more involved review process

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