I just found this interesting because a guy I used to work with had an unnatural fascination for guinea hens, so it’s kind of an inside joke. But still, it’s an example of how growth brings unforeseen problems.
From the AC Press:
Paul Affatato sat Friday outside his mobile home, just beyond a tall fence from Norberto Roman’s back yard. A large guinea hen emerged from the brush by the fence and rambled past him.
Roman, a casino worker who has lived in the house on two acres for years, has roosters and chickens who have been sneaking under the fence lately into the densely populated trailer park. Roman said the prior owner kept horses without any complaints.
But Affatato, 82, told the township committee Wednesday that his neighbor’s 11 roosters were running amok and crowing outside his window from 2 a.m. until 8 a.m.. They had robbed him of sleep for months, he said.
Affato’s complaint about his neighbor’s birds and their incessant cock-a-doodle-doos triggered a committee discussion on the future of fowl in the township.
The township is now seeking to silence and cage roosters and other fowl, which abounded in the days before subdivisions replaced the township’s old farms, stables and piggeries.
When residents lived on several acres, they could keep hens to lay eggs and eat bugs, and roosters to crow at intruders. Now, with new homes crowded onto lots as small as 5,000 square feet, clucking poultry presents a nuisance and a possible health hazard, Township Administrator Peter Miller said.
The article also has one of the most interesting words I’ve seen in a while:
“If you have more than one acre, you can have a horse,” Miller said. “You can’t keep a pig unless you have a piggery, but when it comes to other animals – possums, porcupines, rabbits, guinea hens, chickens, roosters – we really don’t regulate them.”
I have never heard the word piggery before…it sounds vaguely dirty, though. Yeah, don’t tell me…it’s a place where pigs live.
That’s EHT for you.