John and Mary Jones awoke this morning to the sound of the dawn chorus - and the crowing of their beloved cockerel.

"It's a wonderful sound and the cockerel is part of that chorus," said Mr Jones, an industrial chemist of Kirk Lane, Eastby, near Skipton.

But it could have been different had Skipton magistrates not overturned a noise abatement notice slapped on the bird by Craven District Council. Neighbour Stuart Chambers had complained that the crowing blighted his life by waking him and his wife every morning at 4am.

But magistrates weren't convinced, declaring animal noises were appropriate in the countryside when the Jones family appealed against the notice.

So Cocky has been given legal permission to carry on heralding sun-up in the smallholding where he lords it over a brood of 23 hens.

"We are extremely relieved," said Mr Jones, whose wife is a maths teacher.

"My wife keeps the poultry and she would have been very cut up if it had to be destroyed. The whole thing has been ridiculous.

"It doesn't make much sound. We've had poultry in the field at the back of the house for 18 years and our other neighbour also had them for long enough. It was only in April last year that we received a complaint.

"We live in the countryside, there is farmland round here with animals and when people come to live here, they must realise that." When the couple's four children were young, each of the hens had been named.

The children had now left home but the hens were kept for breeding and their eggs.

Mr Chambers told magistrates he had lived in his house for four years but the problem arose as Cocky matured and his call became high-pitched.

Craven district council was ordered to pay £3,000 costs.