blackfishfin

Chirping
May 16, 2019
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I need some advice on what we can do. I'll give you the entire story from the beginning.
-My family moves into a nice fixer-upper. We build a 14 x 14 chicken coop and get six bantams and 6 guineafowl. 4 of them are roosters!
- We get a few more because we don't want the rooster problem to build up. Our dog is being a normal cute pupper and wandering around the yard, and our neighbor sends us a pic of her dog poop and demands that it not happen again. We live in the middle of the woods and have two acres and a cow farm behind us, and they don't like it when a dog poops in the forest next to their yard? This would have been slightly more acceptable if it was just in the grassy part of their yard, but it was in the woods right next to their yard line.
- We continue normally. We get our dog surgery and she is living inside with us. She gets sick and we unfortunately have to put her down, but we got another dog, Copper, before she passed. We are all really sad. Around this time is when the neighbor starts complaining about how loud our guineas are and the rooster crowing. They send us the covenant that they made before we got here. Basically it said that we could not have any animals that would be a "nuisance". Their wife also brings up that our chicken coop cannot be seen from the road, even when it is not in the covenant. We talk to our other neighbors and ask them if the crowing is a problem. Both of our neighbors said that they could hardly hear the crowing when they were inside, and one of them lives closer to us than the other neighbors. We start looking for new owners for our roosters. Both of them are a very docile, beautiful, and expensive breeds so we doubt that it will take long. No one is looking for a rooster, obviously. We live in the middle of the woods on a 90 acre farm! We ignore him while we are looking for their new homes.
- The two roosters that we are getting rid of are found dead on the ground within two days of one another. (suspicious, right?) None of the other chickens are harmed, but the neighbors are harping on us and trying to get our other neighbors in on it. They threaten to sue us. We call them back and the wife yells at me that we better get a lawyer and hangs up the phone. We continue to ignore them and tell them that we do not want any problems. We schedule a meeting with the neighborhood(there are only three people living on our road. The one behind us is not a part of the "neighborhood") to discuss the covenant and possibly changing it with the vote of the entire neighborhood. They refuse to show up to the meeting and we cannot get any laws legally changed unless every member has a vote.
- They keep complaining about our guineas, so we take down our chicken coop and build a new one on the opposite side to them. The neighbors behind us said that we could move the coop a few feet back and they could cut a hole in their barbedwire fence so that technically the coop would be on their property line and we wouldn't be in trouble. (bless them) We decline, seeing as we were going to build another coop anyway and our other neighbors are talking about getting some chickens and guineas themselves. They asked us if we could move some of our flock over closer to their yard so that they would kill some snakes and eat some of the ticks that they have. We, of course, comply! They are so kind. We build a coop that is twice as big and cannot be seen from the road.
-The neighbors wife comes over and apologizes and cries and I'm like, "It's alright, just please don't sue us and leave us alone." And then the next day she goes over to the other neighbor's house and tells them that we just don't care about their feelings and should have gotten rid of the guineas. What? Where did this come from?
-My daughter runs inside one day and tells me that she saw our neighbor feeding our guineas on his side of the house behind our shed with something and ran away (as fast as a fat 65 year old man can) back into his house when he saw that our kids were watching.
-Our neighbor goes quiet for a while, but eventually starts up complaining about our guineas. We notice that he has started shooting his gun on the porch. One day, we hear five loud shouts in our direction and within five minutes he sends us a long and mean text threatening to shoot our guineas if we do not get rid of them! My husband goes over there and tells him that this is ridiculous and that we have a seven year old kid and shooting into our yard would be unsafe! He blows up at my husband and he leaves. The next few days the neighbor has been going onto his porch and shoots his gun.
-We are freaking out and get rid of our guineas. We give them to a wonderful person who already has guineas and works with my husband. We know that our neighbor is dangerous and that he is not lying about shooting our animals. We don't know what to do. We are going to get some security cameras around our house, but we had been planning that for a while.
-The next few days, we are burning leaves in our yard. I am sitting on a lawn chair watching the fire while my husband works in the yard. A full-on fire truck pulls up in our driveway and team of firemen get out of the truck. My husband is like, "What is going on?" and he talks to the firemen. They said that they got a call that there was unattended fire that was out of control at this location. My husband points to me and says, "My wife's been watching the fire this whole time." I wave to them and it's actually kind of funny because by the time the firemen showed up, the fire was already all burned up. The firemen tell us that our neighbor called! Can you believe him? The firemen ask us if we called the fire in and we said yes. (You have to call a number when you are about to burn to figure out whether a burnban is on and you have to give them your location so that they can send the firemen to your location) If he wanted to check if the fire was out of control and unattended then he should have walked over to our house and looked at where the smoke was coming from. (He couldn't see the fire from his house because our house and a strip of forest was in the way of the fire)
-The next day my husband takes our seven-year-old out to walk down the road and our neighbor approaches them and says, "You know what, I've thought about this and we just need to be friends!" and my husband is like, "That's literally what we've been trying to do. You literally threatened to kill our animals!" And the neighbor goes on a long tangent on how "he never meant it" and then as he gets angrier as he goes, "I would've shot those things and dragged them off and you woulda never known what happened!" Like what is wrong with him?

We are scared to death of him killing our birds! What can we do? I love my chickens and I don't want to have to get rid of them!
We gave them brownies the second day we moved in and you know what, I want my dang brownies back!

Since I didn't describe our house situation, here is a quick picture of our property that might help you.
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Pardon the very crude drawing, but we cannot do that. They do free range, but they do not get on his lawn. I'm afraid that he will lure them in. The chickens can pass the red lines, but they do not because they have our other neighbor and the back field behind them.
 

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Is there anything were you live that says no roosters? What is this covenant? did they make it with other neighbors? Could you erect a fence so they can't see your chickens/guineas i am not an expert but they sound like bad neighbors who hate birds
The covenant does not say anything about animals other than that "They cannot be a nuisance." this includes dogs, horses, chickens, guineas, giraffes, etc. (anything that breathes) They made it with the neighbors that were here before us, so there were only two people living on the hill at this time because our other neighbors had not finished building their house yet.
 
The covenant does not say anything about animals other than that "They cannot be a nuisance." this includes dogs, horses, chickens, guineas, giraffes, etc. (anything that breathes) They made it with the neighbors that were here before us, so there were only two people living on the hill at this time because our other neighbors had not finished building their house yet.
Giraffes? Wow, some people have very... exotic pets.
Anyway, it sounds like you have a pretty bad neighbor. If he was going to shoot into your yard at the guineas while your daughter was out and about, I would say call the police... shooting towards a house, anyone's house, is dangerous.
I hope that you can figure something out and that you'll be able to keep chickens and guineas safely... they're such funny birds.
 
Giraffes? Wow, some people have very... exotic pets.
Anyway, it sounds like you have a pretty bad neighbor. If he was going to shoot into your yard at the guineas while your daughter was out and about, I would say call the police... shooting towards a house, anyone's house, is dangerous.
I hope that you can figure something out and that you'll be able to keep chickens and guineas safely... they're such funny birds.
Thank you for your support! The shooting hasn't happened any time recently these past few days, so I'm not as worried about it as before.
 

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