Surprisingly, its the roosters people say they like. Our alderman came by to visit just before election day, and he said he always kept a rooster, and anybody who keeps chickens ought to be able to keep a rooster, too. In many of these older homes, there are still little coops in the backyards from the Victory Gardens era.
Our town is old fashioned suburban, with sidewalks and lots about 50X100ft, most of the houses are around a hundred years old in varying stages of rehab, some teardowns and fancy schmancy rebuilds. But the housing market bubble burst in 2009 just after we got our chickens, and now I am surrounded by foreclosures filled with transient renters. Most neighbors stay for around 6-8 months, and they have been very nice and happy to visit the chickens. 2 homeowners just behind my lot have never been nice anyways, and the only thing they've ever said about the chickens was when their poorly mannered teenboy said, "I have a clear shot from my back porch, I'll shoot Chloe first". DH made a police report about that.
On the bright side, four neighbors reported getting chickens after visiting mine.
Another neighbor gave me a gift of rooster mugs, telling me to "stop worrying, its fine" when I worried the rooster made too much noise. The LAST thing I want is to wake anybody up at 00:GOD:00 hours. So, we insulated their coop, even the ceiling, for muffling. Still, a man who's lived on my block for 20 years longer than I have, told the mailman, "Noise? It's me who starts the rooster crowing! I get up at 3am to pee and can't get back to sleep, so I open the back door and crow, sometimes he crows back".
Poor hens get almost no attention at all.
But I think, when it comes to neighbors, probably a lot of people have trouble with neighbors anyways. Chickens just give them more to bawk about. If you didn't have chickens, they'd pick on anything else.
