Portage River Farm

Before beginning the work of building our chicken coop, I put a call in to our township zoning officer to see what kind of regulations I would need to follow. As it turns out, any structure larger than 100 square feet requires the blessing of the township and county authorities. He directed me to the township website and I downloaded an application for a "land use permit". Completing the permit was the easy part.

I was also required to complete a site plan showing the locations of the coop relative to any existing structures and the property lines. They asked that I stake out the exact location of the coop so that they could do an on-site inspection. I prepared all of the above and made my way to the township office in Pinckney to get my plans approved and to pay the required $75 fee.

The zoning officer proved to be very nice. He invited me into his office and we went through my paperwork and discussed my plans. After that he came out to the farm with me and I showed him the location. He said that my intentions were well within the zoning requirements and issued my signed permit on the spot. He said that the township only dealt with issues of siting location and overall size of the structure. For the regulations regarding the actual methods of construction I would have to go talk to the Livingston County Building Authority.

I visited the Building Authority office in Howell with my land use permit in hand. I had prepared myself for an onerous list of unreasonable demands that would drive the costs of my little project sky high. Instead, I was pleased to find out that they had no requirements at all for buildings constructed for housing agricultural animals. I was completely off of the hook and good to go! They had me fill out a little more paperwork and filed it with a copy of my land use permit.

In the back of my mind, I had been a little worried that following the rules would mire me in bureaucracy and make the project more costly and difficult. I have a sneaking suspicion that most people around here just do whatever they want on their properties and deal with the authorities if they ever happen to get caught. In the end I am glad that I followed the rules and got proper approval. It's reassuring to know that I can build my over-engineered chicken coop without any fear of ever having to tear it down because I had failed to get all of the proper permits.