How to deter a visiting cockerel

Bluefinch · Post by **Bluefinch** » 17 Sep 2015, 15:55

Our neighbour has chickens and a cockerel. The cockerel seems to like my girls better than his and keeps coming up here. A few weeks ago our neighbour decided to buy three more hens to try to keep his attention at home but after a few days he started coming back here again. I have nothing against him but don't want a cockerel and certainly don't like being woken at 5 in the morning! Each evening I take him back home and next day he is back. He used to deter my girls from laying in the coop as he often went in there during the day. Any ideas? I even tried throwing water over him one day but he didn't mind that. Apart from the owner finding him a new home I don't know what to suggest.

Post by **Totally Scrambled** » 17 Sep 2015, 16:29

Afternoon Bluefinch,
Greetings and welcome to The Lane )wav(

I'm making some assumptions here but to me it sounds like the neighbour's chooks are completely free range with no attempt to keep them in their home area or at least not enough to prevent the boy escaping.
Is he waking you at 5am by being in your garden or is he in a coop close enough to you for his crowing to disturb you. If the former then that is definitely unacceptable and if the latter then the coop needs moving further away or some attempt to muffle the noise.
It shouldn't be down to you to keep returning the boy as as far as I'm concerned his owner should notice he is missing and round him up, especially as he would be pretty certain where he is and he should do something to prevent his wandering.
We have two boys, one is in a coop as far away from any neighbours as it is possible to get and the other is in a coop that I double lined to greatly reduce the noise and as a result they don't annoy anyone and they certainly don't get out of their runs. If they did I would be looking at confining them to a fully enclosed roofed run.
If your neighbour is breeding I can understand him having a boy, although he should be doing more to reduce his annoying habits, but if it is just so he has a cockerel then he should get rid of him for the sanity of his neighbours.
In short there are things that can be done to stop him wandering around the neigbourhood and some things that can be done to reduce the noise during unsocial hours but not stop it completely without building a state of the art soundproof coop :-D

Hope that's some help.
Dom

Bluefinch · Post by **Bluefinch** » 17 Sep 2015, 16:50

Hello and thanks for your answer.

I think part of the problem is that he used to live here. Our neighbour used to own our house and he has moved a few minutes away down the track. We are fairly isolated here with only the one neighbour. His chickens and mine are both free range. Occasionally his girls will wander up here but always go back home again. The time he woke me up at 5am was when he snuck into the coop with the girls and I hadn’t noticed and so he was here for the night! And another time I thought he had gone back home but must have roosted somewhere on our land for the night.

I think I will have to suggest that the owner finds him another home or keep him contained somehow – but he is not used to that!

Bluefinch · Post by **Bluefinch** » 17 Sep 2015, 22:15

I need to vent somewhere. I texted neighbour to tell him we were going out for a couple of hours and I would like him to collect his cockerel. When we got home the cockerel was gone but he had left the coop closed so my girls couldn't go to bed. I have found one of them under a bush and put her to bed but have not been able to find the other one. Really hope she will be okay. I am fuming. Why couldn't he have left the coop open for them.