Animal noise complaints to Adelaide councils up almost 10 per cent over past two financial years

Are turkeys, roosters or goats keeping you up at night? Or maybe mating frogs from your neighbour’s pond. They are just among some of the thousands of noise complaints made to local councils over the past two years. See the figures for your council.

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Frog mating calls, bleating goats and gobbling turkeys are among the animal noises infuriating Adelaide residents enough to complain to their local councils.

But it’s incessantly barking dogs that are the major source of a spike in complaints in last financial year.

It’s likely, however, that dogs are not barking more – rather that so many more of us are working at home and being driven nuts by the neighbours’ yapping mutts.

Across 18 Adelaide councils, complaint numbers rose 7 per cent from 2558 to 2744.

While Port Adelaide Enfield Council recorded just a 4 per cent increase in 2019/20, from 398 to 412, it has fielded some of the more unusual complaints over the last couple of years including 79 about roosters.

There were also three on turkeys, three for goats and even one on frogs.

“A house in Semaphore bought some frogs for a pond in their front yard. The frogs bred and started making a lot more noise,” a council spokesman said.

“Our local nuisance officer investigated the complainant and kept a diary of the noises.We issued an action for the owner to resolve the issue.

“The owner tried a number of things including citrus acid to make the frogs move away. However it didn’t work so, in the end, they removed the pond.”

West Torrens recorded the biggest increase at 36 per cent, from 147 to 201 complaints, followed by Unley and Playford both at 24 per cent.

Prospect recorded the largest drop at 42 per cent, down from 26 to 15 complaints.

The figures come as a Birdwood woman fights an order to remove a number of roosters from her property in the Environment Resources and Development Court following numerous noise complaints.

Pet owners call on Dog Knows Training and Behaviour Consulting owner Kate Denman to train their dogs to stop annoying the neighbours.

Majority of all complaints were in relation to dogs. Supplied

“You need to identify the type of barking the dog is doing,” she said.

“Some dogs bark because they are bored, others are alerting and others are scared. Then you address the cause like removing triggers,” Ms Denman said.

She said the rise in complaints could be put down to more people working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic and hear dogs barking more.

“But by the same token, dogs that are home are probably with their owners and probably less inclined to bark.”

Advance Behavioural Training in Athol Park trainer Bianca Whitehead said more dogs were experiencing separation anxiety, causing noise issues.

“When their owners leave they will be barking, just trying to get their owners to come back,” Ms Whitehead said.

“And people are getting less tolerant of barking dogs these days too.”

West Torrens Mayor Michael Coxon said the figures were concerning and put the increase down to more people staying at home.

“But until we have done an investigation we can only speculate that the impacts of people working from home as a result of COVID-19 restrictions has meant that more residents are aware of noise issues in their neighbourhoods, leading to more complaints that would usually be reported.”