Some years ago now, when I lived in Nerang on the Gold Coast, we had backyard chickens for a while. The head of the house decided it would be nice to get some fertilised eggs and give them to a couple of our bantam hens to incubate, and the little chickies hatched just before I departed south for a seven week research trip.
Upon my return, I discovered that the chicks had grown into semi-mature hens and... roosters, which were just beginning to crow, prompting a complaint from the neighbours. The Gold Coast Council's animal regulations stipulate that a person must not keep a rooster on a lot with an area less than 4,000 square metres per bird - the same standard that applies to the keeping of emus! Thus we had to part with our emerging roosters.
So - one of the early English nuisance cases involving animals is Leeman v Montagu (1936). Leeman sought an injunction restraining Montagu, a poultry farmer in Surrey, from keeping cockerels that crowed from 2 a.m. in the morning to around 7 or 8 a.m. Leeman asked someone to record the sound of the cockerels on a gramophone record, but the judge decided not to listen to it. The witness who made the recording said the noise was like ‘three cornets, two of which were out of tune’. The previous owner of Leeman’s cottage compared the sound to ‘a football crowd cheering a cup-tie’. There was also evidence that the poultry farm could have been rearranged to ensure the cockerels were further from the cottage. Justice Greaves-Lord awarded an injunction, which was suspended for a month to allow the farmer to rearrange the poultry. If your roosters sounded like three cornets, two of which were out of tune… perhaps the regulations make sense! I love the fact that the regulation treats them like emus.
Lord Denning always will be the best of the worst judges 😅
A superb description.
Some years ago now, when I lived in Nerang on the Gold Coast, we had backyard chickens for a while. The head of the house decided it would be nice to get some fertilised eggs and give them to a couple of our bantam hens to incubate, and the little chickies hatched just before I departed south for a seven week research trip.
Upon my return, I discovered that the chicks had grown into semi-mature hens and... roosters, which were just beginning to crow, prompting a complaint from the neighbours. The Gold Coast Council's animal regulations stipulate that a person must not keep a rooster on a lot with an area less than 4,000 square metres per bird - the same standard that applies to the keeping of emus! Thus we had to part with our emerging roosters.
So - one of the early English nuisance cases involving animals is Leeman v Montagu (1936). Leeman sought an injunction restraining Montagu, a poultry farmer in Surrey, from keeping cockerels that crowed from 2 a.m. in the morning to around 7 or 8 a.m. Leeman asked someone to record the sound of the cockerels on a gramophone record, but the judge decided not to listen to it. The witness who made the recording said the noise was like ‘three cornets, two of which were out of tune’. The previous owner of Leeman’s cottage compared the sound to ‘a football crowd cheering a cup-tie’. There was also evidence that the poultry farm could have been rearranged to ensure the cockerels were further from the cottage. Justice Greaves-Lord awarded an injunction, which was suspended for a month to allow the farmer to rearrange the poultry. If your roosters sounded like three cornets, two of which were out of tune… perhaps the regulations make sense! I love the fact that the regulation treats them like emus.