UPDATE: ‘They have 20+ chickens in a makeshift coop against our shared fence’: 30-year-old woman narrowly avoid a neighborhood feud after confronting her new neighbors about their rodent-infested DIY chicken farm

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
May 29, 2025 7:00 PM EDT

As a non-confrontational person, it's hard to resolve problems with other people. Accustomed to rolling over and accepting your fate, many non-confrontational people are tempted by the concept of tattling, or ratting on a person who's causing them grief—especially if that person is breaking a whole myriad of HOA rules. 

While the urge to become an HOA-tattling Karen is strong, we must fight it! This woman in our next tale successfully de-escalated a particularly perturbing neighborhood nightmare just by being frank with the people next door. It all started when the 50-something-year-old couple next door decided to build a ramshackle, DIY chicken coop on their shared property line, damaging the fence and wafting the scent of uncleaned chicken droppings into her yard. At first, she turned a blind eye, accepting cartons of eggs as penance for losing the use of half of her yard—due to the stink, of course.

But when the pests started creeping into her property and into her home, she drew the line in the sand, taking a stand for non-confrontational people everywhere.

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  • "Would I be the Karen if I reported my neighbors chickens to the HOA?"

    So I'm in a bit of a dillema. I (30F) bought a home in a residential neighborhood with an HOA a little over a year and a half ago. The plot sizes are about .25 acre and allow for lots of trees and gardening, etc.
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  • My neighbors (50's couple) to the west are mostly friendly, even though I've had some weird interactions with them (ex. First communication with them was them telling me to trim my tree,
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  • which I got an arborist to do within 60 days; they were on their shed roof throwing ropes trying to trim it themselves 3 days after asking me to and I had to stop them).
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  • The problem stems from it is against HOA regulations to have chickens and they have 20+ chickens in a makeshift coop against our shared fence.
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  • They got the chickens in spring 2024 and I initially discovered them because a few chickens kept getting into my backyard. I didn't really mind, its made for some funny watching of my partner
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  • (30m) chasing chickens to put them back over the fence. I've had to call the nieghbor before to help get a chicken out of one of my bushes and she was apologetic.
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  • They've brought me a few dozen eggs and it has compensated for the getting woke up regularly by clucking at 6am and not being able to be in that side of my yard because of the smell.
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  • A couple weekends ago my indoor only cats caught a rogue mouse in my home. Its the start of spring so I was hoping that it was just a field mouse that got in. We cleaned everything up and moved on. The
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  • next weekend we got a knock on our door from an exterminator letting us know that they were servicing the neighbors with the chickens for mice and gave us their card. The next morning another
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  • mouse was de d in the living room, with bl d all over the place. I spent like 2 hours that morning cleaning and sanitizing. Would I be a Karen and/or a h le
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  • to report the neighbors for the chickens to the hoa? I've not really been bothered up until now, but I can't with mice in my house potentially because their coop isn't clean. I'm worried about retaliation
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  • from the neighbors, as my other neighbor yo the east told me the people who owned my home before me partially moved due to a feud with the neighbors with the chickens. Apparently the neighbors
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  • let their wild blackberries run rampant as retaliation and I am still cleaning up thorns from that (my legs get cut up mowing the lawn because a random thorn branch with get caught and whip around).
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  • My partner thinks we shouldn't do anything, people should be able to have chickens if they want, which I agree with. But I also shouldn't have to clean up de d mice in my house.
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  • Tldr: would I be the Karen if I reported my neighbors to the hoa because I have mice and its likely their fault due to a chicken coop against our shared fence?
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  • Edit: someone mentioned looking up rules for chickens for my city. So apparently only 6 chickens for a 10,000sqft-1 acre property, and coops need to be minimum 10ft from property line. Both of these
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  • are not being met with the 20+ chickens and them using our shared fence as one of the walls of the coop. Still unsure what to do :/ Update: I got really worried about my cats last night and ended up
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  • texting my neighbors this morning explaining the exterminator stopping by and asking about if any poison was used. The wife came over to let me know that they only got traps laid since their dog also catches the mice.
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  • She also said "I'm done having the chickens here" and explained that her brother has a farm and their building a huge (showed me pictures) coop for the TWO- HUNDRED FIFTY chickens they
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  • have across both the farm and the house. Apparently she's raising them at the house from incubation then taking them to the farm. So maybe this has fixed itself, we'll see if they're gone in a few weeks.
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  • She did claim the mice is a problem for the whole neighborhood and its been that way for years - hope that's not true! Thanks everyone for the advice, I appreciate the bolster to
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  • try to talk to people who intimidate me (I'll do anything for my fur babies). Added bonus: I still also get free eggs as she said to come over anytime I want some!
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  • The_Real_Flatmeat If you can't use that side of the yard because of the smell, then they're not cleaning properly anyway. Communication is key here i think. If the coop is moved away so you can use your yard, and they sling you half a dozen eggs every weekend, I'd look the other way myself
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  • Rhyslikespizza What? This is insane That's just too many chickens for one coop in that amount of space! A 20 chicken coop would be massive. I would report them to animal
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  • care and control. They will handle things and escalate to the police as necessary. The HOA should find out because they're monitoring police involvement in their community.
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  • RabunWaterfall If the previous homeowner had a problem with the chickens, I suspect the HOA people already know.
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  • LetMeBeAngry POISONED MICE MEANS POISONED CATS Not the Karen at all. At this point, your babies are in danger. If it was me, I'd want to call the HOA and also Animal Control. At this point, they aren't even being humane to the chickens.
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  • And with Animal Control, you can absolutely keep it anonymous. Even if you don't want the HOA involved, please call the city
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hoa neighbors anti joke chicken neighborhood chicken coop fence karens in the wild hoa drama chickens property Bad Neighbor farm animals karen property line
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