A petition to ban roosters on rural properties within the City of Ballarat has sparked a lot of discussion.
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Read some of The Courier's letters to the editor relating to the issue below.
Not this old chestnut again!
Before I moved to Australia 50 years ago, I lived in a farming village 30 kms from a major city.
People started to move from the city to the village.
They soon discovered rural smells, cows, tractors and roosters crowing in the morning.
They complained and tried to have all of these stopped.
One woman thought she was so important that the village clock which had chimed for over 100 years should be silenced.
Luckily, the local council took a different view and the complainers had to get used to the situation or move on.
The English rural writer Ronald Blythe said "people move to a place because they like it, but then try to change it to a replica of what they left behind".
Hopefully our local Council will see through this nonsense and act accordingly.
- David Harvey, Golden Point.
If you move to a rural block then you should expect to hear, and tolerate rural sounds as part of the country experience.
This includes roosters.
Sleep with earplugs if the sounds bother you.
Think about how much of your noise your neighbours have to put up with.
- Karen Fitzpatrick, Sebastopol.
I think it is unreasonable and unnecessary to ban roosters from rural blocks.
People choose to live in a rural location because they wish to enjoy the extra lifestyle possibilities, which include livestock and self-sufficiency.
Non-urban areas come with their specific noises - poultry, tractors, machinery, cattle and sheep and this makes a vibrant, active, living environment.
A rooster is noisy but so is a train, and people living near the railway line get used to the noise of trains and can block it out.
Similarly with a rooster.
You get used to them.
If you are not able or willing to adjust to the natural sounds of a rural environment then maybe it is not for you.
A silent countryside without the living sounds of rural activities, pleasant and not-so-pleasant, is a dead place.
Magpies can set up a loud and wakening din every morning - is that to be the subject of the next petition once the roosters are removed?
Within reason people should accept the inevitabilities of the environments in which they choose to live, and livestock sounds are one of the inevitabilities in a rural area.
A crowing cock is a quintessentially rural sound and signifies a working countryside.
- Paddy Zakaria, Apollo Bay.
The cartoon on this page says it all.
I live on a suburban block and my neighbour goes to work at about 3am each day driving what sounds like a very big, very hot V8 engine.
Should these too be banned?
Or is it now that engine of any decibel are acceptable but any animal is not.
- Anne Sim, Patchewollock
I have neighbours that occasionally play loud music, some have motorbike, all have mowers and chainsaws, they have dogs, and roosters.
We also have cockatoos, kangaroos, frogs, snakes, mice, rabbits, foxes, sparrows and all sorts of wildlife getting around.
No one who lives in these areas and have grown up in these areas have an issue with any of it nor would we have it any other way.
If people don't want the smells and the noises associated with rural living, don't live there. Simples.
It's like someone living in a beach house complaining about the crashing waves.
As a society there are some that just need something to whine about. Toughen up, princesses.
- Simon Cook, Haddon