A photographic print of Industry, Agriculture, Poultry - Birds & Farms - Miscellaneous

UNLESS someone comes up with an effective cockerel-silencer, Albert Owen will have to silence his cockerels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, for good. (Here he is, on the left, with John). Two neighbours of Mr. Owen, who lives in Rippoth-road, Bow, E., took their cockerel complaints to Thames Court yesterday. Said Mr. Charles Baker: "They start crowing at about 4.30 in the morning and it is impossible to get any rest. Sometimes they crow in the night." Mr. Albert Jefferies had a slightly different complaint: "I have seven children," he said, "and one boy is a very light sleeper. ROOM TO CROW "The cockerels wake HIM up - and he wakes the family up by running round the house every morning." Mr. Owen, who pleaded not guilty to keeping noisy animals which caused a serious nuisance, said that, on advice, he had raised their perches and covered the front of the run. He was fattening the cockerels for Christmas. "If they have room to stretch their necks, they can crow," pointed out the clerk of the court. The magistrate, Col. W. E. Batt ("I should be very angry if I was disturbed before eight on a Sunday morning") adjourned the case for two weeks if Owen would undertake to keep the cockerels quiet - or kill them. Industry - Poultry