‘Torture, that’s what it’s like’: Elderly couple takes neighbor’s rooster to court for crowing 200 TIMES a day
BAD SALZUFLEN, GERMANY: A rooster that is claimed to crow 200 times in a day and is referred to as "torture" by its neighbors, is being sued by an old couple from Germany. 76-year-old Friedrich-Wilhelm K and his wife Jutta, the neighbors, claim that Magda, the cockerel, starts to cock-a-doodle-doo at 8 am and does not stop for the remainder of the day, disturbing an entire neighborhood.
The elderly couple is now planning on taking legal action against the rooster and its owner 50-year-old Michael D. In preparation for court, the couple in Bad Salzuflen, Germany, kept regular files noting every time Magda crows and screeches in an effort to get the bird evicted from their neighborhood house.
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According to the Daily Mail, in an interview with German TV, Friedrich-Wilhelm said, "We can't use the garden and we can't open any windows. He doesn't start until 8:00 am because he is locked up at night but then he crows 100 to 200 times throughout the day. It's unbearable." His wife, Jutta, added, "It's hard to talk about torture, but that's what it's like." Torsten Gieseke, the pair's attorney, commented, "A cockerel doesn't belong on a quiet housing estate." Friedrich-Wilhelm also mentioned that one resident left the area a couple of years ago because of the obnoxious squawking.
Michael D countered that keeping the cockerel is necessary to maintain order among his hens. Michael argued, "The hens need the rooster, otherwise they would pluck each other." In 2018, Michael invested in five chicks for the backyard to retrieve their eggs. However, one of the chicks grew up to become a rooster, which rapidly infuriated the neighborhood's inhabitants. Friedrich-Wilhelm and Jutta, who have endured the regular screeching for several years, have finally had enough and will now appear in court with Magda's owner Michael at Lemgo District Court. Friedrich-Wilhelm said, "We really did a lot of tests. Our kids tried, and our neighbors tried. The neighbor doesn't give up his rooster and we have to either live with that, or we have to win in court." Magda's court case reflects the troubles of many other households in Britain who have claimed that loud roosters in populated areas are ruining their environment at home and are gradually becoming one of the main sources of noise pollution.
Following complaints from worn-out neighbors that a raucous bird that awakens the area every morning at 4 am has turned their existence a misery, council authorities in Worcester are looking into one particular residence. Frustrated residents of Arboretum, Worcester, asked in May that the authorities take the bird away because they said it had given them eight weeks of sleep disturbances. Although, the bird has been maintained as a pet. 48-year-old Sonya Vickers, a neighbor who lives a few blocks away from the particular house, said, "Some of us have gone round and politely asked to at least keep it in the dark coop until 8 am, before letting it out. But nothing has happened. We have asked nicely several times. It is antisocial. It is making life a bit of a nightmare for some down here." "We heard it might be breaking a bylaw to keep the cockerel and the hens they have. It starts crowing at 4 am. Sometimes it's 5 am, but it's every day," she added.
Furthermore, a neighbor who has a home-based job claimed that the rooster has been disrupting his zoom meetings with his boss. "It's very hard to concentrate and sound professional when it sounds like your office is on a farm. My colleagues have started calling me Old MacDonald because our morning meetings are constantly being interrupted by cock-a-doodle-dos," he said. While keeping chickens or roosters is not prohibited, anything that makes a loud disturbance, or causes noise pollution, may be considered a nuisance under the 1991 Environmental Protection Act. In the meanwhile, a magistrate in Blackpool instructed a couple in December of last year to find new homes for their four cockerels that had been causing agony to their neighbors for three years.
The Lancashire neighbors of 58-year-old Lorraine Burgeen and her spouse Alexander, 69, described their lives as a horror. Neighbors said that when they requested the pair to get rid of the birds three years earlier, they were aggressively rebuffed. "It has been a nightmare. You can't sit in your garden, you can't open your window. It has been a horrendous noise, and they just don't seem to care," said a nearby resident. The pair was required to select a substitute home for the bird after they entered a guilty plea to noise control violations at the Blackpool Magistrates Court.