Council officials shoot dead three wild cockerels to stop them disturbing residents' sleep

A council spent four months trying to capture a group of cockerels accused of disturbing a rural village only to end up having to shoot the birds dead. The hunt for the birds, which had been abandoned by their owner, began after residents complained that their sleep was being disturbed by early morning crowing. However, despite attempting "all methods of live capture", the authorities admitted failure and had to resort to the "exceptional methods" of using a marksman to pick off the cockerels. The killings have upset some residents of Beccles, Suffolk. who had given the birds names and enjoyed feeding them with leftover food.

James Howes, whose mother lives nearby, said: "I am horrified. Those chickens have been there for years. They could have at least dropped a letter through people's doors to explain what they were doing." The saga began in June when the authorities received an unspecified number of complaints about more than a dozen birds which had been dumped beside the river Waveney. Ten were re-homed after being caught in baited traps or by council officers climbing up trees at night and wielding nets and dog loop leads to catch them as they slept. But three of the birds managed to avoid capture and started roosting even higher in trees at a height of 25ft to 30ft so they could not be reached.



A decision was finally taken to use a council sharpshooter with an air rifle and torch to blast the birds out of the trees as they roosted. Andrew Reynolds, the council's principal environmental health officer, said the cockerels had been abandoned illegally and the council had received complaints about noise. He added: "This left us with little option but to intervene for the benefit of the health of the community. The environmental health team took steps immediately to catch and relocate the cockerels, and the majority of the birds were successfully re-homed without a great deal of fuss.

"However, the remaining cockerels began roosting higher in trees in order to evade capture, prompting us to use a variety of humane methods to capture the birds in order that they could be relocated in a more appropriate environment. After four months of sustained effort, we exhausted all methods of live capture and exceptional steps were taken to deal with the last three cockerels, which were continuing to cause an unreasonable disturbance. We reluctantly took the decision to remove the remaining three by more vigorous means, and our team made the difficult decision to dispatch three cockerels humanely by shooting them. With the successful completion of this, we believe the noise problem is now over."