Cockerels - not horsey but a country matter ;)

Indy said:
The barn conversion in our farmyard is being sold and an interested buyer asked the seller that if they bought it would our cockerels be moved off the farm - they got told not on my nelly - then to add insult the geese held their car hostage - I don't think they'll be buying it.

We aren't trying to make the sellers life hard but as soon as they pulled onto the yard they moaned about the tractor then the dogs and finally the poultry - anyone would think it was a farm.
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With all the other farmyard noises going on, maybe a cockerel wouldn't be so obvious :). Maybe that's the problem for me - it is so quiet here normally that the cockerel crowing stands out!
 
1life said:
Didn't choose to live next to a cockerel, have been here 19 years, he moved in next to me! :)
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Live ant let live. I live next to 5 barking police dogs, many seasoning mares and horny stallions, dairy cows and horny bulls. Not by choice.
 
equi said:
Also, the wild cats fight and have sexy time outside my window. Can't help it.
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Lol! Although there are no raccoons living on my farm, they wouldn't dare! I can hear them in the woods and fields nearby and by god they make an awful racket ... which also sets my dogs off!

OP we have a pond out the back of my house and in the spring the frogs and toads come out and live there all summer. The very first year I was here I seriously considered draining the pond so that I couldn't hear the (very) loud noises they make! And then one night I told myself over and over again "frogs and toads make a lovely sound" and eventually I've become used to it. I know in my heart that I still hate the constant and loud noise of them, but I continue to remind myself that I 'like' the noise and it does help :smile3:
 
Spring Feather said:
Lol! Although there are no raccoons living on my farm, they wouldn't dare! I can hear them in the woods and fields nearby and by god they make an awful racket ... which also sets my dogs off!

OP we have a pond out the back of my house and in the spring the frogs and toads come out and live there all summer. The very first year I was here I seriously considered draining the pond so that I couldn't hear the (very) loud noises they make! And then one night I told myself over and over again "frogs and toads make a lovely sound" and eventually I've become used to it. I know in my heart that I still hate the constant and loud noise of them, but I continue to remind myself that I 'like' the noise and it does help :smile3:
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You know Spring Feather, that is good advice. I will try to tell myself, before I going to sleep, that the noise does not have to wake me up....and if it does wake me up I will try to tell myself that it is not THAT annoying and I can get back to sleep...I WILL try very hard, promise :).

I will also amuse myself with an image of you trying to drain a pond...what were you going to do, suck it out ;).

Thank you
 
The fan idea is a great one - I'm a light sleeper, but the sound of the fan doesn't bother me in summer and it blocks out or dulls other sounds. Its become a noise that means "sleep" to me...
 
I really don't get this.

I have 7 cockerels and sleep with my window wide open, they never wake me up.

Even people that stay here say after the first morning they just sleep through and don't notice them

Perhaps you just need to chill ;)

But I do agree with living in the country you should expect country noises
 
To be honest my cockerels make far less noise than some of my hens. A couple of them make a hell of a racket when they've laid, one hen burbles away constantly, and several of the bantam hens screech for no apparent reason. Still none of them are a patch on our hand-reared owl that used to start clamouring for breakfast with a very piercing screech the moment it heard me getting up to go to the loo in the middle of the night, so I did relocate that to the stable yard as I thought it was very antisocial. Not only is it now too far away to be heard, its noise is somewhat drowned out by the pigs singing for their breakfast..............
 
Cockerel, phah! That's nothing.

Wait until your neighbour gets an Oriental stud cat in an outdoor breeding pen and he starts to entertain ladies! (And you also get directed to some VERY dodgy sites if you google "oriental kittens" by the way!) :)

(I meant the cat entertaining ladies not the neighbour :))
 
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I live on a housing estate, neighbour got several cockerels, all crowing all night, spoke to him and got a similar response to OP, phoned council, they ordered him to shut them in at night/ move them away from our house and threatened him with an ASBO! Result!
 
Coming back to this thread again, I absolutely adore the countryside and all it's noises (and smells) but twice in my life now I have moved to a big city for work, the last place being Milton Keynes (ughhh) and the noise from foxes in mating season is absolutely horrific and the place was crawling with them. It went on for hours and hours through the night, it sounds like a girl is being murdered (sorry for the relation there) and there's nothing you can do to stop it and trust me it's a noise you cannot get used to!

Right now there's a Tractor in the field out the back ploughing, the gentle hum of the Massey Ferguson engine and the clatter of the ploughs is music to my ears compared to THIS!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6NuhlibHsM
 
1life said:
You know Spring Feather, that is good advice. I will try to tell myself, before I going to sleep, that the noise does not have to wake me up....and if it does wake me up I will try to tell myself that it is not THAT annoying and I can get back to sleep...I WILL try very hard, promise :).

I will also amuse myself with an image of you trying to drain a pond...what were you going to do, suck it out ;).

Thank you
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I have faith in you! You can do it :smile3:

As to the pond, well our farm is fully tile drained with underground drains running the length of each field and the collected water runs down to a small lake we have at the far end of the farm. Where the pond is, it is also tile drained but we blocked the drains so that we could keep the pond near the house (great idea eh?!) as we thought it looked nice and our young daughter at the time liked to take her little boat out on it. Anyhow, once the tree frogs came along, and then the noisy toads followed, I found myself having a change of heart. We kept the pond for a few more years and then we unblocked the tiles and put new ones in so as to drain the pond ... that worked no probs however the frogs and toads decided they would stay. So now we only have a temporary pond at certain times of the year, but we still have the amphibians shouting at me every night lol!
 
You have my sympathy with the frogs and toads: they sing?? all night, if you hated their noise here you'd not sleep after 11 p.m. but they simply join in with the owls, barking dogs, sheep, etc who are out all night. The cockerels start about 3.00 a.m. and then eventually the dawn chorus quietens everybody else down so that we end up with daytime peace and harmony. Still much better than deadly silence.
 
There is an article regarding cockerels in Smallholder magazine this month - owners must take reasonable actions to keep the bird quiet etc and not to upset the neighbours ....... It could cost the owners upto £20,000 if they do not abide by rules and regs in keeping him.
The article is on page 50/51 of the magazine and is interesting reading
 
Pootler - No thank you! I already have one of those but fortunately he works a lot of nights ;)
 
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debsandpets said:
There is an article regarding cockerels in Smallholder magazine this month - owners must take reasonable actions to keep the bird quiet etc and not to upset the neighbours ....... It could cost the owners upto £20,000 if they do not abide by rules and regs in keeping him.
The article is on page 50/51 of the magazine and is interesting reading
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Interesting - is the article in response to anything or just general info?
 
Spring Feather said:
I have faith in you! You can do it :smile3:

As to the pond, well our farm is fully tile drained with underground drains running the length of each field and the collected water runs down to a small lake we have at the far end of the farm. Where the pond is, it is also tile drained but we blocked the drains so that we could keep the pond near the house (great idea eh?!) as we thought it looked nice and our young daughter at the time liked to take her little boat out on it. Anyhow, once the tree frogs came along, and then the noisy toads followed, I found myself having a change of heart. We kept the pond for a few more years and then we unblocked the tiles and put new ones in so as to drain the pond ... that worked no probs however the frogs and toads decided they would stay. So now we only have a temporary pond at certain times of the year, but we still have the amphibians shouting at me every night lol!
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You seem very relaxed about your amphibian zoo ;) as some have said re cockerel noise, maybe it would now seem to quiet without them?
 
dunlin said:
coming back to this thread again, i absolutely adore the countryside and all it's noises (and smells) but twice in my life now i have moved to a big city for work, the last place being milton keynes (ughhh) and the noise from foxes in mating season is absolutely horrific and the place was crawling with them. It went on for hours and hours through the night, it sounds like a girl is being murdered (sorry for the relation there) and there's nothing you can do to stop it and trust me it's a noise you cannot get used to!

Right now there's a tractor in the field out the back ploughing, the gentle hum of the massey ferguson engine and the clatter of the ploughs is music to my ears compared to this!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6nuhlibhsm
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eeeeek!
 
nicelittle said:
I live on a housing estate, neighbour got several cockerels, all crowing all night, spoke to him and got a similar response to OP, phoned council, they ordered him to shut them in at night/ move them away from our house and threatened him with an ASBO! Result!
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It's obviously something your council take very seriously then? Had other people complained?
 
LessThanPerfect said:
Cockerel, phah! That's nothing.

Wait until your neighbour gets an Oriental stud cat in an outdoor breeding pen and he starts to entertain ladies! (And you also get directed to some VERY dodgy sites if you google "oriental kittens" by the way!) :)

(I meant the cat entertaining ladies not the neighbour :))
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Yep....I think that one would have me moving house :(

Oriental kittens! Can well imagine ;)
 
RaposadeGengibre said:
I am next.... sometimes I do think about smothering him with bleeming pillow...
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Ahhh yes, I forgot about that as well. My only solution is to try and fall asleep before him! He's actually been to the Doctors before about the bruises on his legs and the GP diagnosed him with restless leg syndrome. He's one of these Google hypochondriacs so after 15 minutes of him Googling everything from "can lead to heart attack" to "death" I told him it was me kicking him to stop him snoring :o

Something I completely forgot to add on my last post was that when I first lived in a city I really couldn't sleep what with all the sirens, chatter and city noise throughout the night. I went to the GP to get some sleeping pills and he suggested a white noise CD. Bought one from Amazon, stuck it in the hi-fi, put it on repeat, went to bed and slept brilliantly. It's worth a try I suppose!
 
Dunlin said:
Ahhh yes, I forgot about that as well. My only solution is to try and fall asleep before him! He's actually been to the Doctors before about the bruises on his legs and the GP diagnosed him with restless leg syndrome. He's one of these Google hypochondriacs so after 15 minutes of him Googling everything from "can lead to heart attack" to "death" I told him it was me kicking him to stop him snoring :o

Something I completely forgot to add on my last post was that when I first lived in a city I really couldn't sleep what with all the sirens, chatter and city noise throughout the night. I went to the GP to get some sleeping pills and he suggested a white noise CD. Bought one from Amazon, stuck it in the hi-fi, put it on repeat, went to bed and slept brilliantly. It's worth a try I suppose!
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Snoring obviously isn't funny!.....but the bruises?? that made me chuckle!

The white noise cd will be on my list after the fan....only problem is I only need it in the earl hors of the morn so it will need to be on repeat all night ;)
 
Maybe I've missed it, but has anyone yet suggested that perhaps cockerel owners, particularly of the very loud cockerels or the ones which start up well before the dawn chorus, could just be expected to be a little more considerate towards their neighbours?

What exactly is so hard about shutting your cockerel in at night so that it doesn't start crowing until later, and when it does the noise is muffled.

Not everyone is a good sleeper, and if one of my neighbours got to the stage of having to ask, I'd be mortified.

Around here, yes the crows etc start cawing at 5 a.m., but some cockerels start an hour or two before that, and it makes all the difference to those who do get woken up. Shutting windows is fine in winter, but not in summer. Why be so bullish about it when shutting it in at night is such a small thing to do, and will create so much goodwill?
 
WelshD said:
You'd be surprised how often the chicken groups online have posts like 'I found my cockerel dead in its pen with not a mark on it but with a floppy neck, what predator caused that in inner city Birmingham?' and the rest of us swear we have NO idea!

A friend lost some birds due to rat poison being sprinkled in their run and bleach put in the drinkers, that was very sad

I know your post was tongue in cheek and very amusing but its surprising how many times this actually happens! (not the eating bit though!)
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Only said half in jest ;) It did make me gasp reading your post though about the dead cockerel not a mark on him though, that's actually sickeningly amusing (not that an animal has died but people actually do it and owners actually post it asking what it could have caused the death!)

Poisoning is a no no, that's just horrid. Its not the birds fault a human has caged them and made them live in a certain place! :(

An ex girlfriend of mine's family had a cockerel and he was put in a cardboard box every night and slept in the kitchen and was then put out at a sensible time to be with his ladies. This was a long time ago though and not sure how long he lasted.

I still say pinch it, kill it, cook it and deny all knowledge :p
 
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