A complaint from a rural resident about a small-scale hog-farming operation has Douglas County commissioners considering whether they need to regulate the agricultural activity.

Commissioners at their Monday meeting are scheduled to discuss ideas such as setback requirements and limits on the allowable number of hogs per acre.

But Commission Chairman Jere McElhaney and County Administrator Craig Weinaug said they did not expect the commission to become overly restrictive. And neither sensed much desire to prohibit hog farming in the county.

“A lot of people still have hogs. A lot of people still raise them for 4-H or some for a business, so in no way, shape or form are we ever going to prohibit hog farming,” McElhaney said.

“In the unincorporated part of the county our main industry is still agriculture, so to heavily regulate something like that or prohibit it would really be to regulate what the county is all about,” Weinaug said.

Neither McElhaney nor Weinaug would identify the resident who made the complaint, but they said it involved a small-scale hog operation that abuts the resident’s property. According to the complaint, the operation is producing excessive odor, trash and aesthetic problems.

Weinaug said he has had to tell the neighbor there was nothing the county could do because it has no regulations regarding hog operations.

McElhaney said he may be willing to consider creating regulations that would require all hog operations to be from 200 to 300 feet back from any property line to minimize impacts on neighbors.

But McElhaney said he would first want to invite several Douglas County hog farmers to give comments to the commission before any action is taken.

“We’ll have to be real sensitive about this,” McElhaney said. “If someone has a 60-head swine operation, we don’t want to do anything to hurt their business because they still make valuable contributions to our economy.”

Monday’s discussion may also touch on how the county would respond to any future requests for a corporate hog farm to locate in the county.

“While we’re talking about this, we may ask them for an opinion on regulations that would make it difficult for a large corporate swine operation to locate in the county,” Weinaug said. “But we’re not asking them to talk about it because we have any inclination that such an operation is considering the county.”