Hello! This is my first post, and I have to say I do not own any chickens myself(although I love them and would enjoy having one as a household pet), although I do have several cats. I live in Kentucky, just along the outskirts of a town, but it feels more countryside than suburban.
However, my neighbor has chickens, and as much as I love how pretty and charming they are, they're total nuisances. The neighbor who owns the chickens is actually my landlords boyfriend, and he moved in about maybe two years ago, and he brought his many chickens with him(including an aggressive rooster, but he passed away several months after). They are free-range chickens, and at the start they primarily just lived on their own property, I enjoyed watching them. He eventually got around to build a shoddy coop, but no fencing. As he got more chickens and the more chicks that hatched, they started to spread out to my property and I can even hear some across the street!
I don't mind the early-morning crowing, or the hens squawking here and there and I also really like this form of pest control, but one of the problems is that they come over to the porch and eat my cat's food, defecate on the porch, and peck my cats. For about a year now, every morning for a few hours I have to chase them off back to their owners land, as well as every afternoon. I understand the chickens themselves have no knowledge of 'right and wrong' and 'boundaries' but I have told the neighbors numerous times to fence up their chickens.
It should also be said that they have lost many adult chickens and chicks over the course of living here. There's MANY dogs that roam around here, and even though they seem friendly to humans, they aren't exactly attached to the chickens. Several months ago, something dragged an extremely distressed animal under the house, and it really terrified my family. If I recall, the neighbor even said he was missing a chicken the day after. There are so many wild animals here, that I wish I could bring all of my outdoor kitties in, but our house is just too small to support all five of my cats.
I don't want to hurt their chickens, but I feel like I'll have to do something drastic to make my neighbors understand that their chickens are not safe out here! They are such a tempting treat to any hungry creature, and no matter what I seem to tell them, they never want to construct some form of fencing. Even as I type this, I just had to chase off a younger chicken as they just realized that cat food bowl = free food. Should I just coexist with them and try to manage the food better? Or maybe just try to feed them somewhere else? I really feel like I'm at my wits end.
Thanks for reading.
However, my neighbor has chickens, and as much as I love how pretty and charming they are, they're total nuisances. The neighbor who owns the chickens is actually my landlords boyfriend, and he moved in about maybe two years ago, and he brought his many chickens with him(including an aggressive rooster, but he passed away several months after). They are free-range chickens, and at the start they primarily just lived on their own property, I enjoyed watching them. He eventually got around to build a shoddy coop, but no fencing. As he got more chickens and the more chicks that hatched, they started to spread out to my property and I can even hear some across the street!
I don't mind the early-morning crowing, or the hens squawking here and there and I also really like this form of pest control, but one of the problems is that they come over to the porch and eat my cat's food, defecate on the porch, and peck my cats. For about a year now, every morning for a few hours I have to chase them off back to their owners land, as well as every afternoon. I understand the chickens themselves have no knowledge of 'right and wrong' and 'boundaries' but I have told the neighbors numerous times to fence up their chickens.
It should also be said that they have lost many adult chickens and chicks over the course of living here. There's MANY dogs that roam around here, and even though they seem friendly to humans, they aren't exactly attached to the chickens. Several months ago, something dragged an extremely distressed animal under the house, and it really terrified my family. If I recall, the neighbor even said he was missing a chicken the day after. There are so many wild animals here, that I wish I could bring all of my outdoor kitties in, but our house is just too small to support all five of my cats.
I don't want to hurt their chickens, but I feel like I'll have to do something drastic to make my neighbors understand that their chickens are not safe out here! They are such a tempting treat to any hungry creature, and no matter what I seem to tell them, they never want to construct some form of fencing. Even as I type this, I just had to chase off a younger chicken as they just realized that cat food bowl = free food. Should I just coexist with them and try to manage the food better? Or maybe just try to feed them somewhere else? I really feel like I'm at my wits end.
Thanks for reading.
