1

Cockfighting - Sport or Cruelty

Whilst it is certainly no part of this book to attempt to justify cockfighting in any way, it is most instructive to listen to some of the participants on the subject of whether or not they consider it to be cruel. It is not any surprise that they don’t consider their sport to be cruel, but the reasons that they give are quite wide ranging, varying from the credible to the quite incredible. It all depends upon one’s personal point of view. We can start with a very senior and elderly member of the Oxford Club. I asked him whether he was involved in any of the legitimate hunting sports. His reaction was startling.

I have never had anything to do with any so-called dog sports. I think that dog-fighting and hunting and coursing with dogs is cruel. It is different to cockfighting because a dog will do things for its master long after it would not do them voluntarily. A gamecock acts totally naturally and of its own free will. You cannot make it fight if it does not want to, and you cannot take away its desire to fight even if you wanted to. All that a cockfighter is doing is to allow the birds to do what they would do perfectly naturally if no man was involved. The fact that a man wants it to fight and win is irrelevant to the bird, and takes no part in the outcome of the process. How can anything that a bird does perfectly naturally and voluntarily be cruel?

I fear that one has to provide one’s own answer to that depending upon individual opinions and perceptions, but personally I found it eye-opening to find that some people think that hunting with dogs is cruel, but cockfighting is not. A much younger enthusiast of naked- heel fighting put his argument quite differently:

I don’t think cockfighting is cruel. Lets be reasonable, at the end of the day its only a bloody chicken. All the other artificial things that we do to chickens, like battery egg production and the slaughtering plant processes are a damned sight more cruel than letting them have a go at each other in the pit. The law doesn’t object to those other things. You can torture a chicken by locking it in a tiny cage and forcing it to lay constantly until it is ready to die of exhaustion, then hang it up alive on a rail, half drown it in hot water, and ihen chop its head off. All that is called ‘battery egg production’ and ‘food processing’. If you get caught letting a happy healthy bird have a natural fight in which it doesn’t even get killed, somebody will start screaming for you to be locked up and the key thrown away. Who do they think is kidding who?

Another man provided very much the same argument, albeit phrased in a slightly different fashion:

I know a bit about fowls and I look at it like this. You have to start off by remembering that the fowl has got a brain about the size of a bean. It knows nothing about anything except the basic essentials for survival, food, water, shelter and sex. Cockfighting is all about sex, nothing else. In nature the top cock gets the hens. All a cocker does is to let the cock have its natural battles under observed conditions. Why shouldn’t I watch? If I watch two of my birds having a battle in my yard of their own instigation I commit no offence at all. No law requires me to get out there and break it up. If the same thing happens, but I am caught standing nearby with a mate, we will get charged with cockfigliting, whether we’ve got fifty quid on the outcome or not. That’s bloody stupid; the sort of thing that goes to show the law’s an ass as someone said.

Now we turn to a man from Devon who has been a cocker all his life, as were his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him.

Saying that cockers are cruel is the daftest thing I’ve ever heard. I have got dozens of birds, and they are without a doubt the best treated birds in the whole village. They are kept in the lap of luxury, and given everything they could possibly want including the best of food and housing, and large grass runs to spend the days in before they are put into ‘keep’. Other people in the area keep half a dozen scrawny birds in the yard which they basically just ignore, week in, week out. If they get a few eggs well and good, if the fox has them, well that’s life. I can tell you no bloody vermin get anywhere near my birds. I have never lost one to a fox yet. I reckon that their lifestyle is a very fair exchange for the little bit of sport some of them give me, and even then most die of old age. Anyone who says I’m cruel to cocks is a bloody idiot.

By almost any assessment the following cocker from the East Midlands comes very firmly at the bottom end of the scale of humanity. Apart from being a cocker, he is a dog-fighter and badger-baiter with a list of previous convictions for just about everything known to the criminal law from Wounding with Intent, to Burglary and Poaching:

Of course cockfighting’s cruel, but then I’m a cruel bastard aren’t I? I just like it. If you look in The Bible you can find that bit about men having dominion over all the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. The obviously includes the fowls of the ground as well, so the Bible says I can do what I like with them, and I do. If anybody else don’t like it, well that’s tough shit. I’ll maim anyone who grasses me up, but all my mates are at it anyway so there is no fear of that. I reckon that chickens are the biggest sport in my area, much bigger than terriers and lurchers.

This man’s comments about the popularity of cockfighting in this country are thoroughly well justified by this research, and there are an awful lot of people out there who don’t think that it is an act of cruelty, even though the majority do.

Later on in the book we shall see that 58% of the cockfighters interviewed in the research had at least one previous conviction for some sort of offence of assault, and there is a clear correlation between the willingness of these people to fight other people and their hobby of fighting birds. There is no indication of which lead to the other, if indeed it did, other than in many cases the convictions were as a teenager, whereas the cockfighting often came later in life. Perhaps personal aggression is being displaced into animal aggression. How­ever, there were some respondents who followed the view of this man from Durham

Of course I’m not cruel to my birds. I love them like my own children, and I would feed my birds in preference to myself any day. Anybody who comes telling me that I’m a cruel sod had better watch out because he’s likely to end up with a battering

I at least find that a very thought provoking mentality indeed !

 

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2

Preparing for Battle

To get them ready for fighting the cocks are prepared in advance by subjecting them to a special feeding regime, combined with certain exercises. In some cases other tricks are applied in order to present the birds in first rate condition, such as the ‘forced moult’, but more about that later. In the eighteenth century cocks were brought in from their walks and prepared for up to six weeks. Towards the end of the nineteenth century new ‘Feeds’ (also known as ‘Keeps’) were developed which only required ten days to complete, with the cock being fought on the eleventh day[4].

The following Feed is in current circulation in the Lancashire! Yorkshire/Cheshire area, and is said to be Irish in origin. A particularly filthy and dishevelled copy was recovered from the wall of a Cheshire cocker’s equipment shed.

A little further explanation is required. ‘Bread’ means Cock Cake, which is a particular concoction of various grains and eggs which comes out not unlike a rich Madeira cake. ‘Physic’ means a session of physical exercises for about fifteen to twenty minutes Which are just enough to make the bird pant. They include tossing the bird in the air about four feet off the ground so that it has to flap to recover its balance, and making it walk around on a moving sloping surface. ‘Drink’ means giving it as much water as it will drink at that time, a few beakfuls. There is no water in the pen generally except for the periods where water is stated to be left in. ‘Half of Egg’ means half of hard­boiled egg unless otherwise stated. Milk must never be boiled.

The secret of success in any Feed is to follow the routine to the letter, giving the cock absolutely nothing else. It is said that if you deviate from the routine in any way it was a waste of time starting it.

There is another point of view that says that most feeds are a waste of time anyway. A member of the Oxford Old English Game Fowl Club puts it like this.

Most of the Feeds you see about come from America, and most of them are rubbish. In my opinion there are a very few basic rules, and provided you stick to them you’ll do very well. I use just seven days preparation for a Main. I feed the birds a steady diet of high quality carbohydrates and protein until the last couple of days, when I feed them less. You have to time it so that the bird has not eaten in the fourteen hours prior to its fight, so that it goes in with crop and gizzard completely empty. It is a good idea to dry the bird out a little as well. The reason for this is that if it is full of water, and it gets ‘steeled’ in the lungs, the lungs will quickly fill up with blood and liquid so the bird can’t breathe. This takes longer if its system is short of water.

Having looked at one fairly standard and one very simple regime, there are at the other end of the scale feeding routines of the most elaborate complexity. The following was provided to me by an Essex cocker who admits to having culled it from an American journal and adapted it slightly. It is similar to a number of others that I have seen which have in common that the birds are fed on meat.

	Day 1 :
		No work, feed or water. Leave the cocks alone to get used to each other.
	Day 2::
		Feed cocks all the bread and milk that they will eat first thing in the morning. Use sweet milk and wholemeal bread. For any birds that are extremely fat add 1/4 teaspoonful of Epsom salts to their feed. No exercise or any other food today.
	Day 3
	Morning:	Give the cocks a couple of short sparring sessions each to see if they are worth continuing with. Have two slatted sun coops in the cock house about three feet apart. Put clean straw in each coop. After sparring put each pair in the coops with a few bits of grain to cool down. When the next pair have sparred, take the first pair back to their houses and put the next pair in the coops, and so on. When all the birds have been sparred give each bird a heaped tablespoon of mixed oats and wholemeal bread and 1/3 the white of a hard boiled egg. Give water.
	Noon:	Give each cock four pieces of good fresh lean steak, about the size of a bean.
	Evening:	Exercise the cocks. After exercise and cooling down give the birds as much corn and oats as they will eat and give five beakfuls of water.
	Day 4:
	Morning:	Give exercise. After cooling give 1/3 raw egg white mixed up with equal parts of oats and corn. No water to be given.
	Noon:	Give steak as above and a little lettuce.
	Evening:	Give dry mixture of oats and corn. Then allow six beakfuls of water.
	Day 5:
	Morning:	Exercise, then give tablespoonful of mixed wholemeal bread crumbs, oats, corn and barley. Four beakfuls of water.
	Noon:	Give a few pieces of apple and steak.
	Evening:	Exercise, then give mixture of corn and oats. This time feed it wet and then allow four beakfuls of water.
	Day 6:
	Morning:	Exercise, then give tablespoon of mixed corn and oats with 1/2 the white of a hard boiled egg. Allow six beakfuls of water.
	Noon:	Give steak, lettuce and a few pecks at an orange.
	Evening:	Exercise, then give as much as they will eat of a mixture of 3/4 corn to 1/4 oats. Feed it wet, but do not give any additional water.
	Day 7 :
	Morning:	Spar the cocks three or four short pittings wearing muffs (the equivalent of boxing gloves fitted over the natural spurs to prevent injury). Then give a mixture of bread, oatmeal and corn, and allow six beakfuls of water.
	Noon:	Give steak and lettuce.
	Evening:	Exercise, then give the usual oats and dim mixture, but sprinkle a very little powdered charcoal over it.
	Day 8:
	Morning:	Exercise, then give 1/3 of a raw egg beaten together, with cereal mixture. No water.
	Noon:	Give steak, lettuce, and a few pecks at an orange.
	Evening:	Exercise, then give 3/4 corn, 1/4 oats mixture plus six beakfuls of water.
	Day 9:
	Morning:	Same exercise and feed as yesterday but leave out the egg. Six beaks of water.
	Noon:	Steak and apple.
	Evening:	Same as yesterday, but give no water.
	Day 10:
	Morning:	Same as yesterday plus 1/3 hard boiled egg white. Four beaks of water.
	Noon:	Steak, lettuce and some pecks at an orange.
	Evening:	Exercise, then give dry mixture of 7/8 corn and 1/8 oats. Allow four beaks of water.
	Day 11:
	Morning:	Same as yesterday but leave out the egg.
	Noon:	Give steak and apple pieces.
	Evening:	Same as yesterday, but dampen the feed with buttermilk and spread a little of the powdered charcoal over it again. Give no addi­tional water today.
	Day 12:
	Morning:	Same work and feed as previously, but today include the 1/3 white of a hard boiled egg. No water.
	Noon:	Give a few pecks at an orange and a piece of lettuce only.
	Evening:	Exercise, then give 7/8 corn and 1/8 oats. Feed the mixture dry, but then allow four beakfuls of water to be taken.
	Day 13:
	Morning:	Same as yesterday, but leave out the egg.
	Noon:	Nothing
	Evening:	Give light exercise, and then feed some dry corn only. No water.
	Day 14:
	Morning:	No exercise. Give a tablespoon of dry corn and four beaks of water.
	Noon:	Nothing
	Evening:	No exercise. Give dry corn again, and allow just two beaks of water.
	Day 15:
		Day of the fight. Do not give the birds anything unless they have to wait until the evening to be fought. If so give them a very little corn and allow two beaks of water only. Take special care not to allow them free access to any water. If they get it, withdraw from the main because you will be wasting your time.

To the impartial observer perhaps the most surprising thing about complicated feeding regimes is the sheer amount of time and effort that the cocker has to put into the welfare of each individual bird in his care. Caring for any substantial number of birds is a full-time job.

All of the above feeding systems are for cocks Which are going to fight with spurs. For the naked-heelers the situation is totally differ­ent. The majority make no special preparations of their birds for a match at all. Most are quite happy to put their birds in a match at the proverbial ‘drop of a hat’ without regard to what or when they have been fed. A Cambridgeshire cocker said to me:

I just give my birds a lot of whatever is good for them and let them have what they want. I don’t see it makes a great deal of difference to them either way because what I want to see in my birds is size and stamina. I want my bird to be able to reach to peck their corn straight off the kitchen table if I can get them that big.

A few naked-heelers undertake proper preparation, but they appear to be the exception rather than the rule. A few cut down on their birds water supply the day before a battle, and give them no food for about twelve hours before.

Amongst the exceptions is a man from south Lincolnshire. He is a particularly interesting individual because he is a qualified poultry manager, the holder of an Advanced National Certificate in Poultry Management and Husbandry from an Agricultural College. This is a full-time three year course. Not surprisingly his knowledge of poultry is extensive, and he does not go to battle unprepared:

I let my birds spend as much time as possible running free in the yard and in the surrounding fields where I have permission to let them scratch. I always run one gamecock with a few hens and at least one cock of a non-game breed, such as a Rhode Island Red. My fighting bird dominates all these birds including the other cocks. I think this gives him real confidence when it comes to a fight because he is used to being the boss and winning any argument easily. I generally feed my birds whole corn, but about four weeks before a match I turn to the science in which I’m trained. My attitude is that we’ve got science so we might as well use it. For those four weeks I feed a mixture of commercial Broiler Grower Meal and Rape Seed. The meal is used to raise table birds very quickly. It is very high protein fish-meal basically but it is not very appetising to birds used to whole corn, so that is why I mix the Rape Seed in. The birds go wild for that. I stop their food for 48 hours before the fight, and their water for the last 24 hours so they fight just slightly dry.

This same poultry expert initiated me into the ‘forced moult’. This is used to repair the plumage of a bird that has been damaged in previous battles or by any other means such that it is not in fit condition to fight properly, or does not look capable of winning, no one wants to fight, or back, a scruffy bird. Normally a chicken moults its feathers once a year, in the Autumn. It can be forced to moult at any time, up to twice in a twelve month period. If you try to moult it more frequently than that, its body can’t take the stress and it will just die. Our Lincolnshire poultry expert explains it as follows:

What you must do is to shut your bird or birds up in a dark shed. It must be totally light-proof and bare. What you are trying to achieve is a shock to the bird’s system to make it moult. Give it nothing for 24 hours, then put in some water. Give it no food for 48 hours then feed it whole corn for the rest of its time in the shed. Every day from the time you shut it in, give the shed a good kick every time you pass by. Batter the side of it to frighten the bird. After five days or so, the bird can come out, but wait until you have a bright day at mid-day. What you do then is to hurl back the door of the shed and charge in whooping like an Indian and chase the bird out. Don’t just let it wander out, seriously frighten it out into the bright light. You may find that by then it is already a day or two into the moult, but if it isn’t it bloody soon will be after that. In my experience that method almost never fails. If it does it is probably because the bird is not physically well, and needs to be culled anyway. Commercial poultry breeders do the same thing in houses full of thousands of birds. They birds don’t see a soul for days and are kept in the dark. Then somebody piles in with a radio turned up full, and suddenly you’ve got a massive heap of fowls piled up in one corner and you have to start digging them out manually so they don’t suffocate. It don’t half get the feathers off them though!
 

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