Reasons why I don't trim the tag ends on Honey's collars:
1) The collars are orange. The more orange on her the better for me to see her.
2) We've ended untold numbers of roosters with those tag ends. No telling what might happen if we were to upset that arrangement. Definitely not...
Honey had to dig this old boy out on Saturday in SW MN, and he didn't go quietly. Only 1 raccoon fight. Managed to call her off the others. That one must have ticked her off somehow.
In response to the original question, I actually don't keep records on total birds per season. Last year I kept a fairly close count. It came out to more than Ace's dad. That's all that mattered to me.