Rooster Reduction Regime

Sometimes one needs to just sharpen his ax and get with the program.

The five of you who regularly waste valuable rod and cone time perusing posts hereon are painfully up to date on the status of the Colonel's chicken herd. On the odd chance that an errant blog surfer has been tossed broken-boarded upon the desolate beach that is the Colonel's Corner and knows not the history of the poultry predicament here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere, the Colonel will recap.

Back on the first Saturday after the first full moon following the northern vernal equinox, the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda and the Colonel were wandering aimlessly around one of the Colonel's favorite stores -- Tractor Supply -- and were interrupted in their aimless wandering by a faint peeping. Upon investigation, the peeping was found to be emanating from a large galvanized tub full of yaller chicks. The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda insisted on adopting eight of said yaller chicks. The Colonel then spent the next two months constructing a critter-proof chicken coop, with integral hen house, into which the Eegeebeegee chicken herd moved after reaching the age at which the brooder box could no longer contain the peepage and poopage attendant to eight Rhode Island Reds.

The mouth-breather at Tractor Supply who assisted the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda in choosing just the right chicks, assured her that she had chosen all hens.

Imagine the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's, and the Colonel's, surprise when the majority of the guaranteed all-hen herd began exhibiting decidedly un-hen-like behavior. As the weeks went by and each of the herd's hen names were grudgingly changed to rooster names, a cold, hard reality asserted itself. All but one of the Eegeebeegee poultry posse were of the, ...um, roosterly persuasion.

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda and the Colonel conducted a frantic search for good homes for the excess roosterage. An add ran in the local fishwrap:

Roosters, free to good home. Yard broken. Good with children. The number to call is BR 549.

There were no calls.

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda and the Colonel began stopping traffic on the road past Eegeebeegee and offering roosters to passersby.

There were no takers.

The one hen began to lay. There was wild joy and celebration about the Colonel's vast acreage, until an accounting was made of the cost per egg. With a production rate of one per day, balanced against the cost of feed and coop construction costs, the price of Eegeebeegee eggs was approximately $37.50 each--slightly above the price per egg at the local grocers.

With no takers for the excess roosterage and egg production costs threatening to bankrupt the whole enterprise, the Colonel was forced to take matters into his own hands. This morning, while the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was up the road purchasing pullets, the Colonel was making room for them in the coop.

The Colonel will probably be the only one with enough stomach to chow down on the smoked chicken this evening. Fine by me.