Chi Mai with the quail that she keeps in a coop at her Cayuga Avenue home.
Chi Mai with her quail.
Chi Mai with the quail that she keeps in a coop at her Cayuga Avenue home.
Chi Mai with her quail.
Several small white birds pecked around their pen on Chi Mai’s property along Johns Pond in Mashpee.
The birds—quail—are part of what Ms. Mai calls her “piece of paradise,” a front yard complete with a vegetable garden, honeybee enclosures, and two coops for egg-laying poultry.
But, while Ms. Mai may consider her chickens and quail birds of paradise, some neighbors have considered them hellish.
“They tortured us for the entirety of last summer,” said Woody Martin, a nearby resident.
In April 2018, an anonymous resident filed a complaint with the board about a rooster at the property, saying it was constantly crowing.
Most recently, Mr. Martin filed a complaint last month with the board about noise from one of Ms. Mai’s quail.
In response, Ms. Mai said she was tired about “complaints over nothing [from] people with no life.”
She invited town health officials to come to her property and record the noise level of her quail. “This is ridiculous,” she said.
A record shows that a follow-up earlier this month by health officials with Mr. Martin indicated “no issues.”
Thursday, Glen E. Harrington, the board’s health agent, said no more complaints have been raised, and the issue is settled for now.
These days, Ms. Mai raises only quail and hens. A year ago, she said, she had roosters, but had to get rid of them after multiple complaints about their cock-a-doodle-dos.
Noise complaints of the avian variety, especially of neighbors with crowing roosters, have been lodged with the Mashpee Board of Health for years, Mr. Harrington said.
The health agent has said he has seen at least a dozen complaints made against poultry owners at several different locations across town.
The constancy of complaints, as well as considerations about public health, led the board of health to issue a new poultry regulation last month.
The regulation will require owners of poultry—from hens to roosters, quail, pigeons, doves, ducks, geese and even ostriches and emus—to register their birds with the board of health through an online application. The poultry registry has not yet been launched, Mr. Harrington said.
The new rule also does more to address the issue of noise caused by birds.
Whereas the board of health previously would use the town’s noise and nuisance bylaws to address complaints raised by crowing poultry, the new regulation lays out language which is more applicable to birds.
“We’re doing this to have some control where we really had no control at all,” Mr. Harrington said.
He said the noise bylaw relates mostly to mechanical sounds while the nuisance bylaw requires that the noise reach 90 decibels, a level which causes harm and is about equivalent to standing next to a running lawn mower.
By defining noise as “a sound made by poultry that is plainly audible at a distance of one hundred-fifty (150) feet or more” and produced between the hours of 10 PM and 8 AM, the poultry regulation provides parameters more specific to domesticated birds.
Poultry noises produced during the night are monitored by police, in any case in which a complaint has been lodged with the board of health, Mr. Harrington said.
The regulation also bans roosters from properties smaller than five acres, though variances may be granted to rooster owners whose properties do not have neighbors.
Standing directly adjacent to Ms. Mai’s quail coop, a light clucking sound can be heard from the round, white birds.
“They sound like little crickets,” Ms. Mai said. She contends that her birds are quiet.
“That bird is louder than my quail,” Ms. Mai said, pointing off into the distant treetops where an unseen crow cawed into the blue sky.
Next door, a dog barked in a neighbor’s driveway. “The dog is louder than my chicken,” Ms. Mai said.
Clucking is not the only noise produced by the quail, though. Ms. Mai said that the male quail can crow, especially if the birds become frightened.
Whether that crowing is too loud may come down to the new poultry regulation.
Requiring poultry owners to register their birds is about more than just noise complaints, though.
Mr. Harrington said the board has been considering tighter regulations since 2011 when an outbreak of avian flu was reported in China. Improper storage and use of poultry feed have also added to the town’s rat and rodent problem, the health agent said.
The new poultry regulation creates guidelines for where bird coops may be kept and how they are maintained.
Registered poultry premises will be inspected annually by the animal inspector and feed and grain for poultry “shall be maintained in watertight metal, plastic or concrete containers and maintained in a clean and sanitary manner,” the regulation states.
The regulation also provides guidelines as to how far from human residences, potable wells, and property lines poultry coops and structures must be kept.
Violations of the poultry regulation may include fines beginning at $25 a day for a first offense, $50 a day for a second offense, and $100 a day for any subsequent offenses. Nuisance violations could include orders to remove roosters from premises, the regulation states.
Mr. Harrington said that the board of health has an informal list of about 25 properties with poultry in Mashpee, but the online registry will eventually improve that list.
“Most other towns have a poultry or domestic animal registration already,” he said.
Noise complaints of the avian variety, especially of neighbors with crowing roosters, have been lodged with the board of health for years. Health agent Glen Harrington has said he has seen at least a dozen complaints made against poultry owners at several different locations across town.
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