Sources

Where this comes from

Each government statement on this site, about a Virginia agency, a county or city, or a state or federal rule, names its source and the date it was read. Each was read on the source's own page or in the rule text, and dated. This list is generated from the pages themselves, so it tracks what the site cites.

The rules we work to

• Official sources only. Statutes, regulations, city and county pages, municipal codes, and the contractors a government names as its service. Never a directory, a competitor or a search-engine summary. Search summaries for three jurisdictions repeated claims from competitor sites that no official page supported, and none of that is used here.
• Scope is preserved. A rule about live nuisance animals is not written up as a rule about dead ones, a road service is not written up as a yard service, and a county's policy is not attributed to the cities inside it.
• Absence is reported as absence. Where we searched and found nothing, such as a statewide removal deadline or a statement that a carcass-only business needs a permit, the page says we found nothing, not that none exists.
• Fees appear only where a source states them.
• Unverifiable means omitted. A claim that could not be confirmed on the day is left out.

Things we deliberately do not say

Each of these came up during the research and was left out or bounded, because the evidence did not support the version that circulates:

• That Virginia requires a permit or licence to remove dead animals. DWR issues a Commercial Nuisance Animal Permit whose conditions mention carcasses on a homeowner's property, but DWR's text never says a carcass remover must hold one.
• That DWR, VDH, VDOT or any other agency endorses, lists or refers callers to this site or to any operator.
• Any deadline for removing a dead animal. The only 24-hour carcass rule we found applies to authorised kills, and the 48-hour and burial-depth figures we found belong to DEQ's farm guidance.
• That the Department of Health tells households to put dead animals in the trash. VDH says not to handle them and to report them to DWR. The bag-and-trash advice on this site is attributed to DWR.
• That a whole found-dead deer can go in the regular trash. DWR's disposal guidance is written for the leftover parts of a hunter's deer.
• Burial depths other than the two-foot rule for dead wild rabbits. DEQ's burial conditions are written for farms.
• That any state agency removes a carcass from private property. VDOT covers the roads it maintains, and we read no agency source that does yard removal.
• Any number of days for a smell to clear. Where the site discusses how long a smell lasts, it is labelled as a field pattern, not a laboratory figure.

Every source used, and where

53 sources. All were read on 30 September 2026 unless stated otherwise.

Corrections

Agencies revise pages, ordinances get amended, and service catalogs change with budgets. If something here no longer matches what an agency publishes, or if you work for one of them and we have described your service wrongly, tell us through the contact form. Corrections get made and the date on the page gets updated.

Nothing on this site is legal advice. Where a rule carries money or a legal obligation, confirm it with the agency directly.