Vermont
Cock-a-doodle-don’t? Vermont towns can’t agree on roosters. – VTDigger
Amanda Rancourt was facing a predicament.
She had started raising chickens in response to rising egg prices. But last May, a clutch of baby chicks she was raising in her backyard had grown up. Unexpectedly, one of the supposedly all-female chickens had a surprise for Rancourt.
The chicken turned out to be a rooster.
Rancourt knew what that meant. She could keep the chickens. But she lives in Barre City.
The rooster would have to go.
“It’s unfortunate. I literally live on the Barre City, Barre Town line,” she said. “It just kind of stinks we weren’t able to keep him, legally.”
Over the past few years, complaints across Vermont municipalities regarding roosters and their chatter have spurred many towns to ban them within their borders. Ordinances banning roosters have been in place in Burlington, South Burlington, Williston and Essex Junction for years. Yet regulations are not consistent, even between neighboring communities. The town of Barre, where Rancourt lives, has rooster regulations, while just up the road, the city of Montpelier does not.
As winter finally lets up and backyard flocks begin stirring from their coops, Vermont municipalities are increasingly saying “no” to roosters, creating a patchwork of local regulations that routinely pit the state’s agricultural heritage against suburban quality of life.
More communities have begun considering new bans. Last fall, the St. Albans City Council unanimously voted to ban roosters, with the threat of daily fines and possible court-ordered removal if a rooster is not moved, according to officials. A series of noise complaints regarding roosters crowing around the city had pushed the government to look at restrictions, St. Albans Mayor Tim Smith said.
Urban density fueled the complaints, with most residents living just 30 feet apart. And perhaps a blind spot in the city’s animal control laws helped the backyard chickens proliferate, said Chip Sawyer, St. Albans’ planning director and author of the proposed ordinance.
“A barking dog, you can deal with,” Sawyer said. “You can order someone with a barking dog to keep their dog inside. You can’t really order a rooster to be kept inside the home.”
The new rule drew little resistance. Only one family with a pet rooster complained, Smith said.
“To have some one person feel that his activities, his hobbies, whatever you want to call it, take priority over his neighbors is, in my opinion, very selfish,” Smith said.
Meanwhile, a similar dispute between neighbors in Shelburne prompted the town to debate adopting its own restrictions on roosters.
“They start yodeling at dawn and go on until dark,” wrote Ruth Hagerman, a Shelburne resident, in an email to town government representatives that was shared with VTDigger.
“They are disturbing the peace of those around them and are providing a textbook example of how neighborly policing doesn’t work.”
Yet after debating a drafted law, which was based on ordinances in neighboring municipalities, the Shelburne selectboard decided during a meeting last year to keep things as they were.
Shelburne Town Manager Matt Lawless was wary of overregulating how residents raise animals and produce their own food.
“We need to be cautious, I think, in when we deal with nuisance or when we’re concerned about health and safety, that we also look at the positive value provided, and we not make it hard for people to do things that are good,” Lawless said.
A ban on roosters felt too controlling, according to Shelburne board member Andrew Everett. He felt that for Shelburne, a community that is a mix of suburban and rural, changing traditional Vermont ways should be resisted until absolutely necessary.
Meanwhile, Williston’s war over backyard chickens has now spanned nearly a decade, with residents on smaller properties twice rebuffed in their efforts to keep hens. The city still classifies chickens as livestock, prohibited on any lot under an acre. The most recent attempt to lift the ban died in September 2023. Selectboard members who had previously supported the ban again voted to peel the chicken provisions off a broader housing package, shelving them indefinitely.
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Chicken bans in Williston have survived at least two attempts to overturn them, the most recent in 2023. Photo by Al Frey/Williston Observer
The trend of banning roosters from Vermont municipalities has caused a somewhat unintended wrinkle: what happens to the roosters?
The growing number of roosters that need to be re-housed has become an issue, said Pattrice Jones, cofounder of VINE Sanctuary in Springfield, an animal sanctuary that assists in rescuing roosters.
Sanctuaries around the state have been overwhelmed with requests to take roosters, Jones said. Chicks from hatcheries and farm stores that unexpectedly turn out to be roosters — and misconceptions about roosters being inherently violent — add to the problem.
But the growing list of local ordinances banning roosters has resulted in even more requests to take them in, adding to VINE’s “perpetual” waiting list, Jones said.
For many, emotional attachment to their roosters complicates the decision of what to do with the feathered pets.
“We hand raised them from when they were chicks and my kids were attached to them,” said Rancourt, the Barre chickens owner.
After a few months of looking, she was able to find a more rural home for her rooster, away from the suburban neighborhoods and the rooster ban in Barre.
“We understand that if they ended up becoming a problem with people, that they may end up having to cull them and eat them,”.
“Personally I couldn’t do that.”
Vermont Green FC in USL League Two final: Maximilian Kissel winner
Maximilian Kissel played hero once more to lift Vermont Green FC to the USL League Two championship on Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025.
The defending USL League Two champions, Vermont Green men’s team (2-0) returns to Virtue Field for the first time in the 2026 USL season on Friday against the Albany Rush (0-2).
The Vermont Green men’s team will play in front of another sold-out crowd after captivating the entire state during last year’s playoff run.
The Green enter the home opener undefeated after earning road wins against Seacoast United and Boston Bolts. Connor Miller has been an impactful new player for the Green, recording a goal and an assist in Vermont’s 4-1 win over Boston Bolts. The Cornell midfielder is the lone player to record multiple points for Vermont through two games.
For live updates from the Vermont Green men’s team’s home opener, see below. The most recent in-game updates will be displayed at the top:
Series history between Vermont Green and Albany Rush
These clubs will be meeting for the eighth time. Vermont leads the series 7-0. The Green won the team’s only meeting in 2025, 7-0, behind former captain Zach Zengue’s hat trick.
How to watch Vermont Green’s home opener?
If fans cannot make it to Virtue Field to watch from behind the north goal, the match will be streamed here. Kickoff is slated for 7 p.m.
Contact Judith Altneu at JAltneu@usatodayco.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter: @Judith_Altneu.
ESSEX — Vermont musician Troy Millette has postponed plenty of concerts because of illness, family obligations or bad weather.
Rain, sure. But ravens? Never, at least not until this week.
Millette’s May 30 show, which was set to open the outdoor season on The Old Stage at the Essex Experience, has been pushed back because ravens are nesting in the rafters. State and federal rules restrict what people can do to disturb the nests of birds. Instead of beginning the season at the outdoor stage, Millette will now close it Sept. 25.
“Ironically, my mother is afraid of birds,” Millette told the Burlington Free Press on May 20, the day he learned his concert would be postponed.
He said he’s not scared of birds but is wary. Especially now.
Differences between ravens and crows
Ravens have a brooding reputation, due in part to Edgar Allan Poe and his macabre “nevermore” musings.
“A hummingbird would have never canceled the show,” Millette said.
Like crows, ravens are deep black in color and caw or croak. But there are, literally, big differences.
“You probably know that ravens are larger, the size of a red-tailed hawk,” reads an Audubon magazine article. “Ravens often travel in pairs, while crows are seen in larger groups.”
Millette and his band, the Fire Below, were to perform a night of ’90s country covers. Last year, he had sprinkled a few “ironically amazing” covers of “country gold” from the likes of Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney in sets of his original music. Venue runners liked what they heard and asked for more.
Ryan Clausen, the first drummer for the Fire Below, is music and events director of the Double E venue at the Essex Experience, a restaurant, shopping and entertainment complex owned by Peter Edelmann. Clausen sent a text last week asking Millette if he was afraid of birds.
Millette didn’t think a whole lot about it, but when Clausen reported that one young raven had still not left the nest, prospects for the show grew dimmer.
Country cover songs lose out to birds
Regulations restrict what can be done to remove bird nests.
“A person shall not take or willfully destroy the nests or eggs of wild birds, other than rock pigeons, house sparrows or European starlings, except when necessary to protect buildings and the nests to be removed contain no eggs or chicks and are no longer being used by birds for feeding,” one Vermont statute reads.
Ravens in particular are shielded by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, said Joshua Morse, a spokesperson for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.
“Under this law, it is illegal to kill or move protected species without a permit from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service,” Morse told the Free Press by email.
Clausen noticed the nest well after last year’s summer concerts concluded at The Old Stage. “Once I saw that there were eggs in it,” he said, “there wasn’t much I could do.”
Clausen said state wildlife representatives told him the Essex Experience could either let the birds stay until they flew off — then wait a week to make sure they were gone — or pursue euthanizing the entire nest because of its impact on business.
“That made it a pretty easy call for us. We’re not going to do that,” Clausen said. “It would be so anti-everything that we stand for and what Peter stands for and Vermont stands for. If we can save the ravens, we’re going to do that.”
No one wanted to kill birds, Millette said, just so he and his band could cover “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.”
Critters chewed through wiring
A May 21 visit to The Old Stage turned up a couple of ravens monitoring the action as well as twigs and several square feet of bird droppings atop the stage. Wires were dangling from the rafters of the barn-like structure.
“The ravens have chewed through a bunch of wiring,” Millette said. “There’s excrement everywhere.”
Ravens are territorial, he noted, so getting near the nest is risky.
He wonders if the big birds have it in for him, maybe because of his familial fear of feathered fauna.
“I feel like it’s a personal attack,” Millette said. “They wouldn’t have built a nest for a Ryan Sweezey show.”
If you go
Upcoming concerts on The Old Stage at the Essex Experience (at 7 p.m. unless noted otherwise) include:
- Friday, June 12, StevieMac: A Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks Experience. $30.
- Saturday, June 20, an evening with Quadra. $20.
- 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 1, the Lara Cwass Band. Free.
- 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 8, The Grift. Free.
- Friday, July 10, Spafford. $25.
- 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 15, the All Night Boogie Band. Free.
- Friday, July 17, the Grippo Funk Band featuring Jennifer Hartswick. $20.
- 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 22, Soul Porpoise featuring Dave Grippo and Geoff Kim with The Project. Free.
- Saturday, July 25, The Samples with Arty LaVigne & Friends. $25.
- 6 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 2, Keller Williams’ Grateful Grass with Pappy Biondo of Cabinet. $35.
- Friday, Aug. 14, G. Love & Special Sauce with Dizzyisdead. $35-$135.
- Friday, Sept. 25, Troy Millette & the Fire Below play ‘90s country. $20.
- doubleevt.com
Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@burlingtonfreepress.com.
A second Vermont man this year has died in a Mississippi prison.
Shawn Sears, 56, of Whiting, was found unresponsive in his cell Wednesday morning before medical staff attempted to give him emergency treatment, according to a press release from the Vermont Department of Corrections.
“Mr. Sears was subsequently pronounced deceased,” the release said.
Sears’ death comes as he was in the process of suing the Corrections Department for allegedly denying him access to prison programs. Those programs include taking high school classes and participating in restorative justice processes, which are often focused on rehabilitating both victims and offenders.
Sears had been in prison since 2019 for crimes he committed in Vermont, the release said. He was one of 147 men that Vermont pays a private contractor to imprison at Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi.
The Missisppi prison is run by one of the largest for-profit prison companies in the country, CoreCivic, which Vermont contracts with to help mitigate overcrowding in Vermont’s in-state prisons. The facility holds more than 2,500 inmates — which is about six times the size of Vermont’s largest prison — and is more than a 1,300-mile drive from Burlington.
Sears filed a civil lawsuit against the Corrections Department in September 2025, alleging that he had improperly been denied programming while in prison, according to court records. Court records show that Sears disputed being subject to an internal department policy that allows the department to hold incarcerated people past their minimum sentences if the department deems them to be a danger to themselves or others.
In Sears’ initial court filing, which he wrote himself, Sears alleged the department violated state law and its own directives by determining he was subject to their risk containment policy. Sears wrote in the filing that his status as “risk contained” denied him access to programming in prison that could have lowered his chance of recidivism.
Haley Sommer, a spokesperson for the department, declined to comment on the legal case.
According to a Department of Corrections’ database, Sears had a minimum release date of April 27, 2021, and a maximum release date of Feb. 21, 2055. A minimum release date is the earliest a person is eligible for parole, and their maximum release date is the end of their sentence, according to the Vermont Parole Board.
Since Sears filed the lawsuit in court, the Vermont Prisoners’ Rights Office had represented his case. Court calendars show he was scheduled to appear in Orleans County Superior civil court in June. His court case appears to have been dismissed Thursday.
Sears is at least the fifth person to die in the custody of the Vermont Department of Corrections this year, according to the department’s press statements.
Nine people died in the custody of the department in 2025, Sommer previously told VTDigger. The department’s investigative unit will review Sears’ death, per department protocol, according to the release.
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