SACRAMENTO, Calif. ÷ A noticeable fall-off in the number of chickens and roosters on campus has some people wondering where they've gone.

Douglas Bell, an assistant professor in the Biological Sciences program at California State University-Sacramento, said that there are many possibilities for the absence of chickens on campus.

Bell said that he heard rumors that administration may have rounded up some of the roosters because of complaints of the noise level.

"I'm not 100 percent sure, but as I understand it, it's possible that they may have removed some of the chickens," Bell said.

Matthew Altier, associated vice president of facilities management, discounted these rumors, saying that facilities management typically handles many of the complaints regarding the chickens, but that they haven't done anything to control the population this semester.

"The chicken population has been pretty steady," Altier said. "We haven't officially done anything with the chickens."

He said that a couple of years ago, facilities management had to set up traps to catch some of the chickens because the population on campus became too difficult to control.

Bell said that the chicken population grows on campus as people drop off chickens and add to it, and occasionally lessens with human intervention.

He said that the chickens breed every year, and when small, can be picked off by their natural predators such as crows, hawks, cats and raccoons that live near the river.