Brick Township is moving to ban new roosters in residential neighborhoods after complaints about early morning crowing. The Township Council introduced the ordinance on September 22.
As introduced, it bars keeping or breeding a rooster in residential zones. Roosters already kept in an approved enclosure can stay, but can’t be replaced.
What about Lakewood?
In 2017, a TLS reader asked about a rooster waking the neighborhood, and Mayor Ray Coles answered that private ownership of chickens and roosters is not permitted in town, and that animal control would remove a coop if one is found.
That is the mayor’s statement. However, the code is quieter.
Lakewood’s animal control chapter never mentions roosters. Section 5-8.5 says no one may keep “any dog or animal” that disturbs the neighborhood with “loud and continuous” sounds between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. The code does not define the word, the chapter’s “domestic animal” definition leaves out poultry, and we found no ruling either way.
Toms River is much clearer. Its code allows up to six chickens in the Rural Residential Zone, “but excluding roosters.”
Jackson’s animal rules count poultry as animals, and its noise code bars animal sounds that “unreasonably disturb” neighbors, but TLS found no rule there that names roosters.
Should Lakewood spell it out like Toms River, or is what’s on the books good enough?
Lakewood Roosters Hold Mass Demonstration Demanding Equal Citizenship Rights
As Brick Township, NJ gets set to ban new roosters from moving into the town’s residential neighborhoods, the rooster community of Lakewood, NJ is seeking to ensure that roosters remain an integral part of Lakewood’s population.
Hence, tens of thousands of roosters gathered in Lakewood’s Townsquare Tuesday calling on the township to pass legislation that would grant the town’s rooster community permanent equal citizenship rights in Lakewood.
“From the early morning ‘Cockadoodledoo’ hours of the day until the late evening hours, Lakewood’s rooster community will continue to crow loudly demanding equal rights and equal citizenship,” renowned rooster-rights activist, Henny Fowler, called out to the huge crowd of demonstrators from the podium. “If Lakewood’s human population can’t take a little bit of Cockadoodeldoing at the crack of dawn, well, that is THEIR problem, because, ultimately, we are simply fulfulling our obligation to awaken those lazy bums from their deep slumber!”
“To the human population of Lakewood,” the rooster activist went on to say, “let me forewarn you that, today, they will outlaw residency to roosters, and tomorrow they will outlaw residency to all minorities!”
“My fellow birds,” the rooster activist concluded, “let us stand tall and united, and let us declare once and for all that, ‘The rooster community is here to stay!’ And to our enemies let us holler loud and clear, ‘A COCKADOODLEDOO TO YOU!!!’ “