Brick Township is moving to ban new roosters in residential neighborhoods after complaints about early morning crowing. The Township Council introduced the ordinance on September 22.

As introduced, it bars keeping or breeding a rooster in residential zones. Roosters already kept in an approved enclosure can stay, but can’t be replaced.

What about Lakewood?

In 2017, a TLS reader asked about a rooster waking the neighborhood, and Mayor Ray Coles answered that private ownership of chickens and roosters is not permitted in town, and that animal control would remove a coop if one is found.

That is the mayor’s statement. However, the code is quieter.

Lakewood’s animal control chapter never mentions roosters. Section 5-8.5 says no one may keep “any dog or animal” that disturbs the neighborhood with “loud and continuous” sounds between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. The code does not define the word, the chapter’s “domestic animal” definition leaves out poultry, and we found no ruling either way.

Toms River is much clearer. Its code allows up to six chickens in the Rural Residential Zone, “but excluding roosters.”

Jackson’s animal rules count poultry as animals, and its noise code bars animal sounds that “unreasonably disturb” neighbors, but TLS found no rule there that names roosters.

Should Lakewood spell it out like Toms River, or is what’s on the books good enough?