HELP! problem with neighbor

[Maugwa]

I am a mason. A few years ago I built a block fence for this lady around her back yard. Her and her husband had just bought this old farm house, a few years before, a few miles from a small farm town in an irrigated valley. She was a nice lady and brought me out iced tea and visited several times daily. I found out through her stories that she was upset with all of her neighbors too. They had moved here from some city back East and were going to retire into homesteading. I was building that fence because corn husks accumulated badly in her back yard. She also told me she was allergic to corn pollen and had spoke to all the farmers around her and asked them nicely to plant something else on their farms, but they just keep planting corn anyway. They even had the gall to let people hunt on their farms in spite of her protests. I look around off my scaffold and can see nothing but corn fields all through the valley, but am not surprised. It's been like that at least 100 years, and I think of all the places that must have been for sale that were nearby, but not in the valley - not between the two large canals that farmers get their irrigation water from, and I wonder about people who move to the country, but want to change it to like where they came from. Who want to implement and enforce their ideas on people who have lived there just fine for generations without their special philosophies. I just smiled, and built her a nice fence.

 

[RoosterML]

My neighbor's chickens keep coming in my yard. I like chickens and had hens for many years, thus why I'm a member of this site, but my hens had a 30' x 40' run attached to their coop and were not allowed to roam freely. I wouldn't care about his chickens coming over EXCEPT he has traps set 24/7 by a wildlife control person to catch raccoons, foxes, possums, skunks, etc which are then killed. I love wildlife, which is one reason I've lived here in the country for 30 years. Yesterday he caught and killed a fox (I can't get the screams of that poor baby out of my head) and I am UPSET & FURIOUS; plus it is spring and it was probably a mother fox that has kits. To me this neighbor is irresponsible for not keeping his chickens fenced in & safe but sadly he is legally allowed to kill all the wildlife in the area - and yes I did call the game warden. I am seriously to the point of contemplating shooting his chickens when they come on property. The game warden couldn't tell me if THAT was legal. My husband tried talking to the guy a year ago about putting up a fence instead of killing the wildlife and even offered him 50' of good chain link fence for free...the jerk won't do it. Do other chicken owners have any advice that would help this distressing situation?

One additional tidbit, this neighbor has threatened to shoot another neighbor's dogs for coming on his property and killing a chicken.

Not the response your gonna like but I kinda like your neighbor.. I would likely do the same in protecting my livestock/small stock.

 

[Henriettamom919]

I can see both sides to this coin. I love our wildlife and let me chickens free range during daylight hours. I've never had to trap or kill anytime and even fed an injured mama raccoon at one point but if they started actively hunting my flock I'd trap and turn them over to the local wildlife refuge.

Build a fence to keep out unwelcome critters and report anything that breaks through to the city/county. This seems the fairest solution.