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Cocks shot for breaching the peace

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.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .