Keeping animals on a rural lot in the City of Swan

The state register

DPIRD’s Brands Registration Office runs the register under what it calls the BAM (IMSA) Regulations, the state’s 2013 rules for identifying and moving stock and apiaries.

A registration lasts three years, and DPIRD sends a renewal notice eight weeks before it ends. Changes to contact details must be made within 7 days, and within 2 days when stock arrive on a property not registered to you; making those changes costs nothing. A PIC names the property where the animals normally live, whether or not you own it, and when that is someone else’s land its owner signs the form to consent. As at October 2026, DPIRD gives the penalty for breaching the horse and donkey identification rules as a fine of up to $20,000.

How many animals the land carries

DPIRD defines a stocking rate as the number of animals a pasture can carry all year with little extra feed and without degrading the land, often counted in dry sheep equivalents, where the standard is a 50 kg wether. Stocking above the land’s capacity, it warns, tends to bring animal welfare problems, soil erosion, polluted water and damaged vegetation. Its guidelines for rural small holdings cover the Swan Coastal Plain and Darling Scarp, and it says most local planning schemes require stocking rates in special rural and rural residential zones to match the department’s recommendations.

The City of Swan’s policy, POL-C-090, builds on those guidelines:

• keeping livestock falls under “rural pursuit”, a use permitted only on rural zoned land;
• planning approval is needed to keep livestock above the base stocking rate for dry, rain-fed pasture;
• the base rate is calculated from the cleared pasture available to the stock, not from the lot’s area, across ten land units the guidelines identify by soil type;
• an application above the base rate needs a property management plan, and irrigated pasture is treated the same way once the dry rate is exceeded.

Water, wetlands and neighbours

The policy also asks for remnant vegetation, wetlands and watercourses to be fenced against stock, and flags that land in Public Drinking Water Source Areas, or within 200 m of certain wetlands, may need special management. Where the City’s chief executive thinks a proposal could affect neighbours’ amenity, owners within 200 m are written to and given 21 days to comment. Watering stock from a bore is covered under bores and water on a rural block.

Birds, dogs and bees

Hens

No City approval is needed for poultry, pigeons or parrots, though a covenant on some properties bans poultry.

Roosters

Roosters, geese, ganders, turkeys, peacocks and peahens are allowed only in a rural zone, which the City defines to include rural residential, special rural, rural living, resource, landscape and general rural zones.

Soil

The City offers to test garden soil for a small fee, because old pesticide residues can build up in chickens and their eggs.

Dogs

Every dog over three months old must be registered and microchipped. Keeping more than two dogs, up to six, may need a three to six dog permit.

Bees

The City needs no approval for keeping bees unless it is for commercial purposes or is a more substantial operation than a minor, ancillary one, though DPIRD still requires beekeepers to register.