Woman gets ticket for steer's “excessive cow mooing”

Wallee the steer has earned his owner a possible $1,000 ticket for mooing at night — and disturbing her neighbor. (WCCO TV picture)


Occasionally conflicts emerge between neighbors in the countryside when someone doesn’t like the sights, sounds or smells of animal production that occurs nearby.

Farmers and ranchers have been frustrated as they try to settle the concerns of their neighbors but still continue to do what they wish with their land.

Near Hugo, Minn., the conflict went up a notch: Karyl Hylle received a ticket for “excessive cow mooing” from her two-year-old, 900-lb Jersey steer named Wallee and faces a $1,000 fine and could go to jail. It was a neighbor who had filed the nuisance complaint.

To a television reporter from WCCO TV, the neighbor complained how he hasn’t been able to sleep for the past seven months because of the mooing at night.

"It's a deep, loud moo. It sounds like a fog horn," he told reporter James Schugel, who identified the complainer as only Mark.

“The Hugo City Prosecutor says he just wants to resolve this case as quickly as he can. He really doesn't want to prosecute it. He just wants to find some common ground between the neighbors, that they can agree on,” reported WCCO. This includes Hylle moving her steer’s pen further from the neighbor’s place.

While the television crew did the story in a lighter context, noting for example that the steer didn’t moo the whole hour-and-a-half that they visited the place and perhaps it was “camera shy,” this is a serious and sad reflection of what is happening in this country.

Hylle has a legal right in her area to have not only this steer, but more cattle if she wished. The community is quite rural, with pastures around the houses.

Unfortunately, that is what people from the city desire: a nice rural countryside home, but without the realities of what is raised on the farms.

Hylle might be working to resolve the matter with her neighbor, but what’s to stop other people from following Mark’s lead and demanding tickets for nuisance be given to more farmers and ranchers who might be on the fighting fringe areas separating rural and urban lifestyles?

Hopefully other farmers will help support Hylle and ensure this nonsense ends before it sets a serious precedent.

(To see the original story as well as the TV interview with the two neighbors, click here.)



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