Highway noise

[lau57rin]

Does anyone know how highway noise affects their chickens? The home that I will eventually be building my coop on to raise our chickens has a highway on the other side of the trees and the noise is there, but doesn't bother me. Will it bother the chickens?
Thank you for your help.

 

[chicklover 1998]

Welcome to BYC it may or may not we live on a very busy street in town, two blocks from the highway, with a neighbor that has a very barky dog and nothing bothers our chickens if it does bother them they should get used to them after a while.

 

[donrae]

I live on a well-traveled rural highway and none of my animals are phased at all by the noise or traffic. Sometimes when a load with a poorly secured tarp goes whipping by it gets everyone's attention, but that's it.

 

[Teila]

Howdy lau57rin and welcome to BYC

We do get quite a bit of traffic noise around here and it does not seem to worry my bantams; same with ambulance and fire engine sirens etc, no problems.

They do occasionally look concerned if someone is hooning and spinning tyres etc or if a rather loud motorbike ‘screams’ past, but otherwise they are fine.

Lawnmowers, however, not so much and if the traffic helicopter flies over too low too often, they get a little concerned.

 

[Blooie]

I live in town, and although it's a very small town (600 people) it can still get pretty doggone noisy! We have the mosquito spraying truck once a week or so in summer, and that thing is noisy as all get out. Then once a month they send a plane spraying for mosquitoes out at 5 am, flying very low like a crop duster right over the houses. Wakes the whole town up! Several of the folks in town are truck drivers, so we have the 18 wheelers coming home down our street.

The most reaction we get is a look up, then it's back to what they were doing. We have an Easter Egger hen, Dumb Daphne the Flock Complainer, and she is always on full alert. She looks at the louder-than-heck garbage truck then goes back to whatever....no stress, no problem. Let someone pull up in front and get out of their car, however, and she watches every move they make from they open the gate until the time they get back in their car and leave! They get used to all sorts of racket, and they do it very quickly.

And welcome to BYC! Glad to have you!

 

[lau57rin]

Thank you so much for all of the answers. I know that I am having to get use to the noise I just was curious about when we get our chickens. My first project before we get our chicks is to get a brooder box all set up and I am still investigating what type of coop I am going to build. It will be so nice to have our own chickens and our own fresh eggs. Thank you for all of the kind words.

 

[azygous]

Lemme jump in, pleez, pleez!

I live in the mountains and the loudest noise is the wind in the pines and an occasional caw-caw-caw of crows or a screech from a stellar jay. So you would expect my chickens to go into a royal panic if I fired up my chain saw outside their run. Nope. They hardly notice.

Now, last week I had to drag the shop vacuum into the run to suck up the fine dust that settles on every surface since it can't blow away due to the run being enclosed with its winter panels. The chickens freaked out! No, not over the noise. They went into melt down seeing the strange object!

As soon as they grew accustomed to the vacuum being in the run, they couldn't care less about all the noise it made.

 

[Violetsrblu]

My experiences are the same as azygous's. My chickens react more to sight than sound. Loud airline and private planes fly fairly low over our home frequently (we are under a flight path to a local airport), train tracks are nearby, all the neighbors have loud lawn tractors, leaf blowers, and other machinery, and plenty of motorcycle enthusiasts on our street, but the chickens don't react to the noise. But if I shake a rug or blanket outside, they will alarm and run under the bushes.

 

[Blooie]

Yep, same here. Hence the reason Dumb Daphne the Flock Complainer takes note of the garbage truck and then reassures everyone that all is well, yet glares at at the new car parked where it shouldn't be and a person she doesn't know in the yard!