Crowing boys

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belleisa

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Does anyone know what the rule is regarding keeping crowing cockerels in a town.
A friend had a visit from the council because a neighbour has complained about the noise.
He has only one boy but i guess being daylight at 04.30 ish its a bit early.
He was suggested to get the bird a collar but i dont think they work and seem quite cruel.
Does anyone know how the law stands with this.
Thanks
 
short answer is that they will have to get rid unless they can cut the noise level down. Councils particularly frown on noise nuisance between 11pm and 7am, if the neighbour continues to complain they will eventually install sound recording equipment and then serve a noise abatement order. They could try housing the bird in a coop within a coop, preferably within an outbuilding so you get triple insulation, worked for me when I used to live in a city but you have to be prepared to grab him every night to put him to bed and then get him out again in the morning.
 
[Dino beat me to it... Yep, as above!]

I don't know the exact law (probably a legal form of 'nuisance' or maybe in the ASBA' but it just stands to reason that if someone is complaining and its happening at 4:30am then its only reasonable to do something about it. As I understand it there are 3 options:
Don't have a cockerel (in one way or another) - a rather final option but might be the most logical,
Keep the cockerel in a solid brick structure - like your house, cellar or brick outhouse (it requires mass to block sound but is possible although ventilation in smallish spaces is a design challenge), or
A collar - I haven't tried this but I think, with great care over the application, it could be better (from the birds point of view) than culling (or unlikely re-homing.) I think it would have to be carefully tailored in length and fit but I don't see why it shouldn't work. Its not the easiest way - arguably not the obvious way!
Poor boys, they don't have it easy in captivity or in the wild do they?
 
As for whether it's allowed to keep a cockerel on that premise, does your friend have a copy of the deeds? Depending on where he lives, it may well be written in the deeds that keeping chickens is not allowed. We lived in a 1970s estate for a while where that was the case.

But even if it is allowed, dinosaw and rick are right.
Just imagine someone ringing your doorbell at 4am. Then 5am. Then 6am. And again and again, day after day. You're knackered but have to get to work, the kids are tired for school etc. Much as your friend may be fond of his bird I'm afraid it's just really antisocial to keep a cockerel when you have close neighbours. :|

If he wants / can spend the money on it, a hormonal implant could work, one of my hens has it (freakishly flightly, started crowing, calmed down within 3 days of the implant). £75 (she's a pet). I have no experienced with collars.

Hope it works out :-)17
 
I totally agree with Evie, and I'm glad I don't live near to the friend and her blasted cockerel. Whether or not it's legal to keep a cockerel, there's still the issue of being known locally as a bad neighbour, and I would want to avoid that.
 
Thank you for your replies.
He has been given a month to sort out the problem.
I have sent him a link to web page suggestions, but am not sure what he going to do.
I dont live near him, am about 5 miles away so cant judge the noise level, and dont have any boys myself anyway, as soon as my chicks start to crow I deal wth them .

I dont think he realised people would get upset, as he and his family love to hear him crowing.
But i guess these very early morning wake up calls can be disturbing, roll on shorter days i guess.
 
belleisa said:
But i guess these very early morning wake up calls can be disturbing, roll on shorter days i guess.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately they still start at 5am in January :oops:
I don't mind the noise, our hens can make a racket too, it's the timing of it. :-)07
 
The noisy boy has now been kept locked up until 8am every day and is a lot quieter i have been told.
So he is hoping its enough to keep the neighbour and council happy.
I dont know at what time he locks him up.
But i hope its a happy outcome.
 
The farm next to ours has cockerels, and they can start crowing at 3am, even though they are shut in. She did get a complaint when some townies renovated a cottage down the lane, but as they also complained about tractors, combining at all hours, cows mooing, the council said well it's the country what do you expect.
But a cockerel in an urban setting must be a nightmare unless every house is occupied by a cockerel lover
 
I think it's cruel to shut a bird up until 8a.m, especially in midsummer when they want to be out three hours before that, and in the heat as well. What's the point, even if the cockerel is some special specimen kept for breeding? I think most urban newcomers to poultry keeping often get a cockerel because they have this rosy-tinged vision of country life, or they think the hens need a cockerel in order to lay properly. Then they can't rehome it and can't bear to cull it, and the whole neighbourhood has to suffer.
We once had a neighbour with a bantam cockerel from hell, which crowed all day, not just in the morning, it really drove everybody round the bend, especially the man next door who practically had a breakdown about it. He would stand on the lawn shouting 'Cock a doodle do! Cock a doodle do! How do you like it?' As he was an air traffic controller I was a bit concerned about his mental health. I hated it, too - our peaceful garden was constantly invaded by this bird's loud, monotonous and strident crowing. When they moved, they left the chickens behind - it was just a craze which had soon passed - and my friend moved in, culled the cockerel, treated the shocking scaley leg on the hens, burned the house and its redmite, got an Eglu instead, and we were all much happier, hens included.
 
Not as cruel as killing him though if it keeps him quiet. I would imagine if you put the proposition to the cockerel, locked in till 8 or a broken neck, it would choose locked in till 8 every time. If it works for the owner and the neighbours I don't really see the problem with it. I've kept 2 cocks in an urban environment under similar circumstances and unless my neighbours were lying through their teeth, they never heard them in the morning and they all seemed to like hearing the odd crow during the day.

You need to be sensible though and consider your neighbours feelings as a first priority and keeping the bird as secondary. As the first one was growing up, I went round to every neighbour and told them they may hear some crowing and if it bothered them then they should come see me and I would get rid and I meant it. On a personal level I didn't really fancy being woken up at 5am myself. Giving out free eggs also never hurts in terms of building goodwill either.
 
It does make me wonder what the ratio of cockerels to hens is in the world. Got to be something like one to ten thousand hens. So, I think, it is both good to give a cockerel a fair crack at a life if its possible and perfectly fair not to if it isn't.
If it was cruel to humanly cull them then Mr Bantam will be having plenty of company in the fiery depths! :evil: ;)
 
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