Residents of a neighborhood in Kaua’i have been complaining about the unreasonable noise coming from a rooster farm on the island’s eastern side. Families have been complaining about the dozens of birds piercing the silence of the neighborhood at 4 in the morning, setting off a crescendo of crowing that does not cease for hours.
The noise issue of the rooster farm has also exposed another problem in Hawai’i: the difficulty of cracking down on cockfighting on the island. Many residents claim that the rooster farm is breeding birds for illegal underground cockfighting and that their complaints to county, state, and federal enforcement have been ignored.
Cockfighting in Hawai’i is illegal but it is not a crime to raise gamefowl for fights.
This is a loophole that helps fuel the blood sport. Sarah Schalk, a nurse living on the island and whose family of four uses earplugs and sound machines to combat the crowing of over 100 tethered birds on the farm lot next to her family’s USD 1.7 million property stated, “We’ve got it on full display. We’re just watching it happen from our backyard and it’s like no one cares.”
The Kaua’i Planning Department has started an investigation on the rooster farm. County spokesperson Kim Tamaoka declined to comment while the investigation is active.

The southeast edge of the rooster farm runs up against half a dozen homes on grassy lots. Most of the homes were built 15 to 20 years ago, predating the roosters which arrived in November, legs tethered to A-frame huts.
The agricultural land was previously overgrown, with a donkey occasionally meandering in the pasture. Now, the distance between the noisy roosters and the back door is roughly 60 yards.
According to county property records, the rooster farm lot is owned by John and Crystal Contrades. Until last year, the owners had a reduced tax rate due to an agricultural dedication.
When it expired, the property tax shot up over 2,000% from USD 179 in 2023 to USD 5,065 in 2024. Neighbors say the landowner began leasing the farm to a rooster breeder to help shore up the tax bill.
There is no evidence beyond neighbors’ suspicions that the roosters are being raised to fight but Hawai’i Agriculture Director Sharon Hurd said it’s generally not difficult to discern if someone is breeding birds for cockfights.
“If you’re raising cocks for cockfighting, everybody in the neighborhood knows. But you have to catch them in the act. It’s kind of like selling drugs. We as the state enforcement agency need to watch this guy with a rooster under his arm walk into a cockfight and actually make money off of it,” said Hurd who leads the agency charged with regulating Hawai’i’s commercial chicken operations.

While illegal, cockfighting as a form of entertainment is a lucrative gambling activity viewed by some in Hawai’i as a cultural rite. A popular sport in the Philippines, cockfighting was practiced openly in Hawai’i during the plantation era. Today, it remains an emblem of rural island life, drawing enthusiasts who wager on numerous matches.
In 2010, then-Reps. Roland Sagum, Joey Manahan, and Gil Keith-Agaran introduced a failed resolution in the Hawaii House which would have protected cockfighting as a cultural activity. It was the most recent attempt in a series of state legislation aimed at legalizing cockfighting.
The practice is illegal in all 50 states but Hawai’i is one of the few that considers it only a misdemeanor. State lawmakers have voted down a bill that would have upgraded the crime to a felony.
Hurd said that policing cockfighting is an interagency responsibility however, it is plagued by lax enforcement partly fueled by an attitude of acceptance. Over the years, several Honolulu police officers have gone to prison for taking money from cockfighting operations in exchange for warning them about upcoming raids. Residents also fear retaliation, preventing them from calling the cops in the first place.
Kaua’i Police Department spokeswoman Tiana Victorino stated that the department has no active cockfighting investigations and there have been no cockfighting-related arrests in the past five years.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation also has the jurisdiction to investigate cockfighting in Hawai’i but a spokesperson said that the agency does not pursue it unless there’s an associated federal crime allegation.

Gambling is an inherent part of cockfighting, and it is also illegal in Hawai’i. The large sums of money wagered at cockfights sometimes have links to organized crime.
In 2024, a shooting at a Wai’anae cockfight on O’ahu left two people dead and three injured, while a raid at a Big Island cockfight resulted in authorities confiscating 25 dead roosters, four injured birds, USD 20,000 in cash, gambling records, and a small amount of marijuana.
Despite all the illegal activity, there is a long history of cockfights happening in the open with little to no criminal blowback. Cockfights can be found in pockets all over the islands. When Rep. Luke Evslin added his signature to a bill that would have stiffened penalties for fighting birds, he said that he found himself being flooded with angry phone calls from Kaua’i constituents.
“One of the criticisms was the economic impact it would have because there are a whole lot of people raising roosters and they’re buying fencing and feed and that’s a major part of Kauai’s economy,” Evslin said.
“I don’t know if that’s true but there is at least the perception that it’s true and so it would seem that cockfighting might be pretty prolific on Kaua‘i.”
Many fights take place on private properties in remote areas obscured by jungle, unpaved roads, or difficult geography. Rooster farms are typically less hidden since raising birds is not against the law.
“Those of us that have been to a cockfight cannot believe how organized it is,” Hurd said. “If this is illegal, then all these vendors selling balloons and popcorn under a permanent structure with parking lots and parking attendants, how can that be illegal? If it is illegal, someone is not enforcing the law. And that’s hard to fix.”

For Kaua’i neighbors, the biggest issue with raising chickens for fighting is the disturbance. At the county level, animal noise is typically governed but Kaua’i has no rooster noise ordinance.
The animal nuisance laws of Maui County also do not govern rooster crowing; only noise from dogs and equine animals that bark, bay, cry, or howl are governed. In contrast, O’ahu’s animal nuisance ordinance prohibits animal noise that’s continuous for at least 10 minutes or intermittent for at least 30 minutes.
The Hawaiʻi Department of Health regulates human-made noise from machinery, but generally not noise from animals. KPD this year investigated 500 noise complaints, some of them involving roosters, but a spokesperson provided no further information.
Kaua’i County does not limit the number of birds that can be raised on an agricultural lot unless the parcel is close to land in another zoning district. The Kaua’i Humane Society investigates cruelty or neglect to cats or dogs but not chickens. The law permits raising roosters, even for cockfighting, as long as the birds are treated humanely.
“It’s not illegal simply to raise them for cockfighting,” Hurd said. “And I don’t think anyone raises roosters for anything other than cockfighting.”
Resident Harold Timmins worries the noise could reduce the value of his USD 1.9 million home. He has visited the county Planning Department twice to implore officials to take action against the rooster farm but was left feeling dismissed. As he fears retaliation, he doesn’t want to call the police and escalate a conflict with his neighbor.
However, he said he won’t give up his fight against what he is convinced is an illegal operation. Timmins is currently looking into buying an experimental device that claims to emit a high-pitch sound inaudible to humans that’s meant to annoy, or even harm, roosters.
“If you wanted to raise chickens for eggs or to eat, you’d be contributing to our food system,” he said. “I understand that this is agricultural land but this doesn’t do anything positive for our community.”