How to get my dear girls to SHUT UP?!

TheYLWFlock

Crowing
Apr 18, 2018
1,032
2,268
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Kelowna, BC
Dont get me wrong, I love my chickens a lot, but lately they’ve been screaming their heads off all day everyday, like an egg call except louder and lasts longer. The leader and starter of this activity is my Barred Rock... she’ll scream until I go outside and let them out to free range. So basically they blackmail me into letting them out. Now normally this would only be a matter of annoyance, but our bylaws state that the coop must be 50 feet away from all property lines and 50 feet away from our house... impossible for our property or anyone else’s in my neighbourhood. So we are worried that someone will get fed up with this constant screaming and report to the bylaw officers. So I mentioned that they stop when they get let out... well they have 80 square feet of space in the run for THREE chickens, they have fresh food and water, and a nice coop. So I don’t know what their problem is! Anything I should do to make them quite? Should I add something to their run to make it more fun? Please help!
 
Love your description, I have the same problem, I can't free range, but 10 feet from back neighbor leads to a lot of early weekend conversations from them "whats going on over there?" I hear most often, sigh. I added play yard, xylophones, scratching boxes, lots of things to hop on and over, but nothing beats roaming free :he
so, I will be watching :pop and taking all advice as well!!
 
Love your description, I have the same problem, I can't free range, but 10 feet from back neighbor leads to a lot of early weekend conversations from them "whats going on over there?" I hear most often, sigh. I added play yard, xylophones, scratching boxes, lots of things to hop on and over, but nothing beats roaming free :he
so, I will be watching :pop and taking all advice as well!!
Luckily my direct neighbours don’t mind, I, just worried about the other folks :barnie
My hens, well just a few, make a crowing noise when I'm out there and they want out. It's funny
It’s certainly funny to my family and me, but others might not find it so a,using, more like annoying :lau
For us newbies in the planning stage one more good reason to build adequate room in both coop and run, start with youngsters and never let them free range.
Yes. Unless prepared to free range all th time, don’t do it :he like I said the coop and run are huge mine are just spoiled brats
 
That's funny cause my Barred Plymouth Rock (Omelette) is the vocal one of the group. Not so much to get out of her coop in the mornings (either that or the ducks drown her out) but anytime me or my bf go outside she always comes to us and greets us with her somewhat loud clucking. I enjoy it. Makes me feel like she is telling me how her day is going. Now if only she would let me pick her up or pet her haha.
 
They definitely have you trained! Mine are noisy in the morning ("food! food!") but that's about it.

What do you have in the run for them to do? Do you ever add anything new or different for them to explore?
Yes, unfortunately :he mine have their food and water in the 24/7 and currently (at 6:30 am) Rocky is screaming her head off.

I have some logs that they hop on... I’m in the middle of re arranging so I’m wondering what else to put in there for fun.

That's funny cause my Barred Plymouth Rock (Omelette) is the vocal one of the group. Not so much to get out of her coop in the mornings (either that or the ducks drown her out) but anytime me or my bf go outside she always comes to us and greets us with her somewhat loud clucking. I enjoy it. Makes me feel like she is telling me how her day is going. Now if only she would let me pick her up or pet her haha.
Maybe it’s a Barred Rock thing :idunno mine all let me pick them up and pet them, and otherwise they are perfect, aside from the noise.



They are quiet for most of he time, but since they have such good vision, they can see into our house, we have large windows that look onto our kitchen and dining area, and we spend a lot of time there, so whenever they see us they start blocking, same with when we let our dog out.

We can’t free range all of the time, there are a lot of natural predators where we live, and I’m becoming more and more worried that the bylaw officers will be called on us...
 
I'm blessed to live in an area without such laws and chicken noises don't bother me at all. I can't say that I notice my girls being particularly loud, but I'm not worried about what anyone else thinks, either. When you are, it likely makes ever normal sound from them seem amplified.

That being said, I have found that all of my girls have always been vocal with us. They view us as part of their flock and they want to interact with us. They do cry, whine, beg, cluck, chortle, sing the egg song and sometimes scream bloody murder, too.

If yours are doing the same things, they are just being chickens. I don't know that you can train their wanting to interact with you out of them. Since they can see in your windows, you could try putting up shears, but I have to say that I don't think that would work. (They know you're in there!)

How about hanging some heads of lettuce? I got some kind of chicken treat from my TSC once & it had a plastic piece thru the center, for hanging the treat. Once they finished it, I kept the stick & it's helped me hang iceberg lettuce & heads of cauliflower. That keeps 'em busy, quiet & appreciative for quite a while.
 
I have 3 chickens as well. My little "special" SS used to be the lowest in the pecking order but I re-homed her tormentor and now she's laying and is really noisy in the coop in the morning, until I let them out!

We don't really have noise control in my neighborhood. No one has complained but I'm ready to defend my situation if need be. As far as the noise level it can't be any worse than the neighbor behind me with 2 great Pyreneese mixes that run around his house everytime he lets them out, barking and protecting from whatever? One of them even jumps on his neighbors fence daily, I'm waiting for it to fall down one day cuz those guys are huge! Or my direct neighbor that got 2 puppies last spring that they let bark outside starting at 2 am! One of them ran away, poor thing, and the is a bit quieter now, but still barks at anything and everything. So....
 

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