Cockerel crowing fine 'bizarre'

Karen Thomas said other properties around her farm had cockerels

A woman fined £500 after her neighbours were kept awake at night by her cockerel's crowing says the decision to prosecute her was "bizarre".

Karen Thomas admitted failing to comply with a noise abatement notice issued by Carmarthenshire Council.

Magistrates in Llanelli heard the bird was kept away from her own home but directly under her neighbours' bedroom.

After the case, her neighbour Patricia Breckman said she and her husband Eddie had "suffered terribly at her hands".

Prosecuting for the council John Ryan said a neighbouring couple complained about the noise when the cockerel was moved close to their home in the spring of 2007.

It would start to crow at midnight and its noise was intolerable forcing them to sleep downstairs, he said.

One night council noise monitoring recorded the cockerel crowing 56 times between 0300 and 0600 GMT.

Mrs Thomas was served with a noise abatement notice and later told the council it had been killed by a fox last July.

But the noise started again this spring when two chicks were put back at the same spot.

Her solicitor Karina Hughes said she accepted that harassment had been caused although it was not her intention.

With an Asbo you think of young people on street corners terrorising the local community Karen Thomas

Mr Ryan said the council was seeking an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) banning her from keeping a cockerel at the farm in Maesybont, near Cross Hands, for two years.

But magistrates ruled an Asbo was disproportionate after she gave a written undertaking to move the bird to another part of the farm.

She was fined £500 and ordered to pay £2643.75 costs.

Speaking after the case Mrs Thomas said: "Technically I was guilty - the cockerel was making a noise - that's why I rehoused it.

"My neighbour the other side of me has a cockerel - the complainants have a cockerel - I think the prosecution was bizarre."

She said she had been involved in a long-running dispute with her neighbours and is critical of the council for seeking an Asbo.

"With an Asbo you think of young people on street corners terrorising the local community.

"You don't think of a businesswoman with a clean record being served an Asbo because her cockerel was crowing.

"One of the conditions they wanted to put on the Asbo was I was not allowed to keep livestock within 100 yards of my neighbours property which again is bizarre because we are surrounded by livestock.

"My whole life is horses - I show horses and spend all day with them and if the Asbo had been granted technically I would not have been able to graze my horses on my own land.

"It would have meant my horses would have had to go and that's the only way of life I know."

But Mrs Breckman said she and her husband felt "harassed" and there was no need for Mrs Thomas to keep animals close to their cottage.

"She has 60 acres to the right of us with horses on there. All the other animals that she has kept have been put in this fenced off area," she said.

"They are miles away from her own house."

Mrs Breckman described the noise made by the cockerel as "horrendous" and said her neighbour had also kept pigs, and two other cockerels there.

She currently has chickens and ducks in the area, she said.

Mrs Breckman also denied Mrs Thomas's land was surrounded by livestock.

"We have a horse, three sheep, four dogs, a few hens and a cockerel which is kept 30 to 40m away from our bedroom," she said.