Official BYC Poll: Have Your Neighbors Ever Complained About Your Chickens?

[Loveshorsesandglee]

My neighbors have never complained we don’t have roosters just hens and ducks. We give them eggs.

 

[Hoosier Mamaw]

I was towing a trailer and a stupid dog ran in front of me. My dumb ass put the truck in a ditch trying to avoid the dog. 150 dollars later getting dragged out of the mud by the tow truck, next dog that does that, is road pizza. The guy has a problem with his animals getting loose and does not care. Calling animal control, well, they don't care either until someone gets bit. I tried to talk to the man in a nice manner and was told, well it's rural so deal with it, at which point I told him that the next time I lock up the brakes because one of his cows is in the road. That has happened too, that I am going home with half a ton of steak and if he complains.... well.... it's rural..... I tell you what, you want to crap your pants, try coming up on a bull at 4 am on a dark foggy road, it was a solid black cow and it was like a ghost, just like out of nowhere, there it was, and there I am doing 45. I remember the first thing I seen was the blue tag it had on it's ear. I was driving a saturn at the time so am pretty convinced that if i was not able to stop and hit that thing, my height off the road .vs. that bull, getting dong in the face before dying is NOT my idea of how I want to go out !!

Aaron

A person I knew once was a passenger in a smaller car that hit a horse that was standing out on the highway. When the horses head came through the window the impact broke every bone in his face and his eyes were both damaged beyond repair. He became totally blind for the remainder of his life. You have good reason to be angry.

 

[Birdsonghill]

I have loud dogs, loud roosters and get loud myself sometimes! I have never had a complaint to my face, but then my nearest neighbors are hundreds of yards away and their loud cars and music gives them no room to complain about me! If they did I would just ask them are they serious enough to do something about it? Then if they proceeded to complain, I would try and talk sense to them before telling them to get stuffed! I live in a rural setting, that is getting pressured by development of High end homes for the wealthy and their loud cars and music is very annoying! The newer homes usually have 6 to 8 bathrooms, garages bigger than my home and barn together, four , five or more bedrooms, luxury outdoor kitchens poolside and all the trimmings of wealth and luxury. Some have state of the art horse barns nicer than my home with AC, horse wash bays and all the trimmings of wealth. White wooden fences thousands of feet long. Hired help does their Horse and lawn chores. Many can barely stay on a horse! Most only have three or four people living in them at most! They speed as if they still lived in the city and are fortunately mostly office geeks that would be easily put into place by my country boy neighbors and local deputies. I have returned several of their pets, dogs and horses, after finding them on my property and scolded them for their negligence and ignorance! THEIR poor children, dogs and horses can't help their owners/parents stupidity! Most of their kids and pets need grooming and care. The horses usually need hooves trimmed and /or new shoes and may have barbed wire wounds. The dogs have ticks and fleas and run wild as do their children.(run wild that is)! My old neighbor families children were respectful, looked for ways to help and grew up in a rural and respectful environment and I often employed them for labor. The new rich kids don't do much at home and would never consider farm labor for spending money! They ride in $30,000 Off road vehicles, racing up and down the roads and have $70,000 pickup trucks (16 year old kids!) They think they are country folks now they moved out of the city! They usually start pushing for street lights, curbs and gutters, and more commercial development as soon as they settle in! They miss their Shopping centers, fast food joints and other urban trappings and start pushing for them here in the country they moved too, to escape the city! Our low property tax rate is threatened by them, though many moved here in part due to that low tax and the effect on their mansions monthly payments.

 

[3KillerBs]

I had to change my vote to include "Other".

Other -- my neighbor's rooster is louder than mine and crows more often.

 

[Ascholten]

So.... your wealth envy has what to do with chickens and complaints? Maybe the richie riches look at you as redneck trash, which is why they don't respect you. (see how easy it is to just throw a tag on someone without knowing a THING about them??) Is that the proper, brought up respectably thing to do now? Have you ever bothered to walk over and say 'Howdy Neighbor', Im so and so, and I live down yonder of you.. or are you too busy complaining about their fancy cars to bother with any of that.. neighborly stuff?? Before you go painting pictures of, oh they better not or else, why don't you get to know them first? Really know them, not just try to stereotype them by their cars and kids? You might find out some of them are really nice people, hell, you might even talk them into raising a chicken or 3 in their mansionious yards!!

Oh by the way... speeding in the city.. yah ok... clearly you never been in the big city, cause if you were you'd see the traffic usually is bumper to bumper crap. but nevermind. I don't want my Silverado stereotyped... the chicken poop on the tires might not fit in right.

Also, if you REALLY cared about their animals, as you are lamenting, you'd TELL them, they need grooming, this can hurt the horse, that can maim the dog etc, so that they DO know now, and have an opportunity to do the right thing, now that they KNOW what the right thing is...instead of waiting around for the animal to get hurt so you can then gleefully gloat, I TOLD YOU SO !!

Don't do it for yourself, do it for the animals
Just saying.
Aaron

 

[AvocadoAbi]

Y'all my neighbor said she wanted to kill my rooster.

 

[Ascholten]

Y'all my neighbor said she wanted to kill my rooster.

So did you lend her a knife, a shovel, or a pitch fork?
Aaron

 

[AvocadoAbi]

So did you lend her a knife, a shovel, or a pitch fork?
Aaron

None of them. She's just forcing us to give him away. Honestly, (no offense to her) her dog barking is just as irritating sometimes.

 

[BlondieSoup]

Haha, funny, but that wouldn't win over a lot of people, especially people that eat a lot of processed food and don't appreciate fresh. "just because I eat beef and drink milk, doesn't necessarily mean I want a bunch of cows in a pasture right near my house", for example.
I totally get why people don't want chickens in neighborhoods. Crowing/egg songs can be annoying, , there can be smells (especially if the chicken keeper is not being diligent about maintenance) or the chickens may escape and get onto their property. Just because I love chickens and tolerate a lot of things they do, doesn't mean everybody does, unfortunately.

I'm not sure if you have lived in suburbs much, but if you have you must have been much luckier than I have been pretty much any place I've ever lived when it comes to the local dogs. There are the barkers-all-hours, the front-yard-poopers, and the silent, lurking would-be-killers that lie in wait until you're walking by and then go ape dookie nearly breaking down the fence trying to attack your (now traumatized) young children as we walk to the community mailboxes... so in comparison to that, I disagree that it's justified to ban a few hens for noise or sanitation issues. My chickens only poop in my yard and they've never kept me awake or attempted to attacked passers-by.
I could also mention the cat poop I come upon in my garden bed and lawn where my children play. I don't have a cat. That's what neighbors of 'sanctioned pets' deal with.

I didn't vote because I'm not even sure my neighbors know about the chickens (though it's likely). They all seem nice enough from our short interactions, but I don't know them well and HOA rules are unclear on the subject. We do what we can to keep them (the chickens) low-profile and cross our fingers.

 

[Ascholten]

None of them. She's just forcing us to give him away. Honestly, (no offense to her) her dog barking is just as irritating sometimes.

You should bring this up to her in no uncertain terms.
Ok you want me to get rid of the roo because it's noisy, well what about you tootsie? That miserable curr of yours barks / etc etc all hours of the night. Many find that annoying, you going to get rid of the mutt too since we are on the subject of annoying noise now? Or shall we just leave code enforcement handle it once I start levying multiple complaints?

I mean hey if we are forcing people to get rid of noisy animals then good for the goose, good for the karen too right?

Aaron