Merrimack officials are weighing adopting an ordinance to regulate chickens in residential areas, at the request of a former town councilor who says his neighbor’s rooster makes too much noise.

Other nearby towns, such as Londonderry and Derry, have already adopted rules for owning poultry, but when the proposed ordinance was reviewed for the first time by the town council on Thursday, half a dozen Merrimack residents felt it went against their town’s rural character.

“We’re an agricultural town,” said Jeanne Malouin, a town resident of 40 years. “If people don’t want to listen to the noises of the deer, and the roosters, and the raccoons, and the loons, why did they move here? Because that’s what New Hampshire is about.”

Another resident, Cherri Hastings, said she believed the proposal

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