CAPE ELIZABETH – Cape Elizabeth’s Town Council, responding to complaints about a crowing rooster in the Farm Hill Road neighborhood, decided Monday that the Ordinance Committee should study possible rules that would govern rooster ownership on small residential lots.

The council voted 6-1, Councilor Caitlin Jordan opposed, to refer the issue to the Ordinance Committee.

Earlier this summer, Joe Gajda, 15 Farm Hill Road, requested that the town consider an ordinance banning roosters on small lots. He suggested the ordinance regulate roosters on properties measuring half an acre to 1 acre. Gajda said he and other neighbors have been forced to start their day at 5:30 a.m., when Elvis, a rooster owned by Patrick and Crystal Kennedy, 17 Farm Hill Road, starts crowing.

“This thing crows constantly throughout the day, non-stop,” Gajda said during the meeting. “My wife counted 60-something times in 31?2 hours. She stopped counting because it became too absurd.”

Jordan, who also opposed rooster regulations in 2011, suggested that the ordinance committee create a “crowing-rooster” ordinance similar to the town’s barking-dog ordinance.

“People get dog collars that keep the dog from barking and still get to keep the dog,” she said. “Can we create an ordinance similar to that?”

According to Councilor Jamie Wagner, who said he had roosters as a child, the rooster complaints are “a noise and nuisance issue, not a specific animal issue.”

“There’s nothing inherently bad about roosters, but in proximity it certainly can be a nuisance,” said Wagner.

An ordinance considered by the Town Council in 2011 was dropped in 2012 after a so-called “rooster in question” disappeared. At the time, a draft amendment to the town’s miscellaneous offenses ordinance would have prohibited owners of animals, including roosters, from allowing their animals’ noises to disrupt neighbors. The ordinance also would have required rooster owners to keep the animals from wandering onto nearby private properties.

“Several neighbors have called the police, who are sympathetic to the situation, but are unable to enforce a solution due to the lack of a rooster ordinance,” Gajda wrote in an email to the Town Council in August. According to Gajda, for the past two years, he and his family have kept a couple of hens in their back yard for the fresh eggs and to teach their children about caring for the animals.

Gajda said in his email that in one instance, he discovered one of the Kennedy’s roosters attacking one of his hens after somehow escaping over a 6-foot wooden stockade fence and another 5-foot wire fence around their coop.

He said several communities around Cape Elizabeth have all passed ordinances that specifically ban roosters on small lots in residential areas.

According to Gajda, he does not want the town to pass an ordinance that would prohibit residents from having backyard chickens or that would affect Cape Elizabeth’s farming community.

“I’m interested in exploring the addition of a simple, clear rule that bans roosters by lot size, which would offer people in tight neighborhoods the ability to enjoy their properties in a reasonable manner. I am looking to gain back the peace and quiet at our house that has been taken from us,” he said.

Since moving to Cape Elizabeth with her children two years ago, Crystal Kennedy said at the meeting, she has not found her neighbors to be “neighborly. In fact, it has been toxic, and my family has been bullied,” she said.

Patrick Kennedy said that he first heard of the complaint against his roosters in July, when he received a text message from his wife that police had shown up at their doorstep.

“In the morning, they begin crowing right now at about 6:30 a.m.,” Patrick Kennedy said of his roosters on Monday.

“Admittedly, the roosters were loud,” said Crystal Kennedy. “They were even waking us up.”

Shortly after, the Kennedys got rid of two of their loudest roosters, but they decided to keep Elvis, “no matter what,” said Patrick Kennedy.

After the complaints surfaced, they took measures to address the noise issues, he said, including insulating and soundproofing the coop.

One morning, after taking a decibel reading of 74 of the rooster’s crow, the Kennedys added a thick layer of fiberglass insulation above the coop’s rafters and form-fitting, foam weather stripping to seal the door. The next morning, Pat Kennedy said, he measured the crowing at 60 decibels.

They said that they also clipped Elvis’ wings to prevent him from flying over the fence and have ordered a rooster collar to restrict his volume.

“We have taken measures to appease the neighbors,” Crystal Kennedy said. “And can someone please explain to me the definition of what excessive noise is, what a nuisance is, or what exactly disturbs the peace? What about the barking beagle across the street?”

Patrick Kennedy, owner of a rooster he named Elvis, addresses the Cape Elizabeth Town Council Monday after a Farm Hill Road neighbor requested the town consider an ordinance banning roosters on small lots.