Miniature goats will now be able to legally reside in Charlottesville.
The City Council voted on Tuesday to let city residents have up to three miniature goats at their homes.
Based on the changes approved by councilors, the mini ruminants can be kept within any residential zoning district in the city. They must weigh less than 100 pounds each and be dehorned, and all males must be neutered.
No more than three miniature goats can be kept at the same time on one property, but nursing offspring can be kept until they are 12 weeks old and would not be counted in the three-goat maximum, according to the approved ordinance.
Belmont resident Meghan Keith-Hynes founded the Charlottesville Goat Justice League — a chapter of the larger, Seattle-based Goat Justice League — which was the ringleader in the effort to allow for miniature dairy goats, saying residents should be able to use their land to provide their own milk for consumption.
Mini goats would not be allowed to roam freely in the city, according to the new law.
“The next thing we’re going to do after this law gets passed is organize an urban goat-keeping seminar,” Keith-Hynes, who used to live in Albemarle County, said in an interview Tuesday. “This is a novelty. People need to learn a lot about keeping goats and making them productive in an urban setting.”
A petition circulated by the city justice league earlier this year garnered more than 400 signatures in support of having goats. At the council’s meeting, to further push for the change, Keith-Hynes read a letter lauding the animals from a Fluvanna County resident and miniature-goat keeper.
Councilors have been amenable to the idea of urban goat-keeping, as chickens are already allowed under city regulations.
“It’s so much in line with who we are as a community, to kind of affirm the ability to produce our own food,” Councilor Kristin Szakos said in a recent interview. By allowing goats, she said, “It’s a nice way for us to be able to support that.”
Szakos was not at the council’s Tuesday meeting due to being out of town, but all other councilors supported the goat-friendly change to the city’s regulations.
Not everyone is as receptive to having goats within city limits.
City resident Naomi Roberts first voiced her discontent about urban goats at the Council’s Aug. 16 meeting, saying if people want farm animals they should move to the country.
“I just don’t think that farm animals are for the city,” Roberts said in an interview Tuesday. “You start with goats and then it’ll be something else.”
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