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Egg-onomics
by Brenda Joy
Charters Towers, Qld

We were newly arrived in the country,
On the coast we'd kept chooks in a shed;
We had loved all "Our Girls" as companions,
Whilst "Free-range" left shop bought eggs for dead.

So from poultry man 'Crossbreeds' we ordered
(And it took ten weeks 'til they arrived);
"Point of lay hens," the lady assured us,
"Of fresh eggs you will not be deprived."

We designed a huge coop for our chickens
From a converted horse yard corral,
And to each of the six we said kindly,
"Lay an egg a day, that's a good gal."

We provided them with the best chook food
Full of pellets and sunflower seed,
And the first day there was a collection
Of six eggs - We were thrilled, yes indeed!

We were thinking of who to give eggs to,
The ex owner or Jo down the track,
Or the fellow agisting his horses,
"He might like a few eggs to take back?"

But we soon saw our plans start to waver
When the egg supply decreased to two,
For these chooks far out-fussed coastal relies
As this seed they did NOT want to chew.

But not so for galahs or for cockas,
For the duffs or the sweet lorikeets,
They were flocking around in their hundreds
In delight to find water and eats.

We felt kindly toward all the wildies
(That's despite their calls morning 'til night),
So for them we made perches and feeders,
And bought fine mash to treat our chooks right.

And we tried supplementing their diet
With fresh veggies and salad and more
Soon our bill at the local green grocers
Came out double the cost of before.

But the eggs, they were still slow in coming,
Though we'd spent a small fortune on seed,
For menagerie now in the chook-yard
Was a hungry big wild bunch indeed.

Then one morning we found not an egg, so
We looked down for print clues on the ground,
And it seemed that a greedy goanna
Had been having a feast on his round.

Well we blocked off his entry and exit
And we seemed to stop him in his tracks -
But when still we were getting no eggies,
Hubby threatened the chooks with an axe.

We decided to keep a.m. vigil
To discover what was going on,
For one morning we'd seen three eggs lain
When we went to collect them they'd gone.

It was then that we found the true culprit
(As each country chook owner would know);
It was not the tree snakes or the lizards,
Or the chooks themselves. - It was THE CROW.

His quick gaze was more constant than ours was,
His sharp hearing was tuned in as well;
Just as soon as the chooks made lay noises
He would swoop in to fill up his bel..

And he was not alone in his cunning.
He had kin folk from far come around;
All would sit in the trees on our farmland
In the wait for that 'CLUCK Clucking' sound.

"Stone the crows", said the locals - or much worse,
"Shoot the mean, rotten, BLEEP! Bleep! Bleep! thieves.
String one up in a tree by the chook pen
That'lI make sure the rest of 'em leaves."

Well we could see the sense in the practice
But we found this a hard thing to do,
So instead we strung up old wine Innards
And straw brooms, and we made scarecrows too.

Well of course none of this was successful,
So each morning the race it is on
"Will we beat the old crows to the chook eggs
Or will all of the chook eggs be gone?"

It is, "Five to the crows one to us!" now
Or more often it's, "Six to the crooks!"
And we've tallied the seed price and extras
Not to mention the cost of the chooks.

And we really are way out of pocket,
And we'll never break even ourselves,
Whilst we still have to trudge to the township
To buy eggs from the supermart shelves.