.........Despite the ban, Pacelle said, breeders who claim they are now selling roosters for breeding or show purposes are actually selling battle roosters...........
Does This Statement Exhibit An AR Blood Lust?
Fighting to survive
With laws keeping fighting birds from crossing state lines, breeders hunt for a new place in the pecking order
03/07/04
TOM GORDON
ARLEY -- On the Winston County hillside where they shelter in wooden A-frames called teepees or in blue plastic barrels, more than 600 game roosters raised by Jimmy Cox and his half-brother Mike Barton are a constant cacophony of crowers.
But when another bird flieslow overhead, as a solitary dove did on a recent afternoon, the birds make another sound, more like a raspy whistle of alarm. It often begins with one bird and spreads to the others.
Despite their cooperative alarm system, the roosters would kill each other if they were let loose from the tethers that separate them. Until recently, that's what many of the roosters were raised, trained and conditioned to do in cockfighting pits in places where the sport is still legal — places such as Louisiana, parts of New Mexico, Guam, Mexico and the Philippines. In parts of Oklahoma, cockfighting goes on because judges have suspended enforcement of a statewide ban, approved by voters in 2002.
But Alabama breeders like Cox and Barton say they are not shipping any fighting birds across the state line. That's because of an addition last May to the federal Animal Welfare Act that was aimed squarely at the cockfighting industry.
Under this section, breeders may not "knowingly sell, buy, transport, deliver or receive a bird in interstate commerce for purposes of participation in a fighting venture, regardless of the law in the destination state." Violators may be fined up to $15,000 and sent to jail for a year.
Just for shows, breeding
In the past, about half of the Cox and Barton business at Bama Sport Farm involved the shipment of fighting roosters. Now the brothers say they are selling birds only for show or breeding purposes. It may take years, they say, for them to tell if their adjusted product line will be enough to sustain them.
"We might can survive with just these breed chickens," said Barton, a husband, father of three and grandfather of one. "But it'd be a lot easier on us if we just had it all. Right now we're surviving, but it's rough."
About 20 miles to the southwest, near the Walker County town of Nauvoo, Chris NeSmith can point to a distant empty patch in part of the 30 rolling acres he devotes to raising such rooster breeds as Sweaters, Gilmores, Yellow-legged Hatches and Kelsos.
If he were raising battle chickens, NeSmith said, that patch of his Blackwater Farms would be populated with rooster teepees. Part of his acreage would have a cockhouse where the roosters are conditioned to do battle in a cock pit.
"I was fixing to build one," NeSmith said, "and then this law passed." In the past, NeSmith said, battle chickens made up about 25 percent of his sales. Now, like Jimmy Cox and Mike Barton, he said he has adjusted. Before he ships birds to anybody, he requires them to sign an agreement "that the sale of said chicken(s) is for breeding purposes only."
"I'm not fighting any inside the U.S.," said NeSmith, who has a wife and three children. "I'm not exporting any (battling roosters) because of this law. I'm not trying to break the law. I'm trying to provide for my family and do what I know to do."
Family business
NeSmith, 33; Cox, 31; and Barton, 37, are following family traditions in raising the birds. NeSmith's father, John Carol, who is retired, is well known for his ability to train roosters to be formidable battlers in the pits. Dee Cox, the father of Jimmy and stepfather of Mike Barton, has one of the best-known names in the cockfighting world. Recent health problems have caused him to let his sons take over much of Bama Sport Farm, but Cox still is regarded as one who can do it all — breed, train and fight the birds — with great success.
While Cox's sons learned from watching him on the farm and in the pits — Mike Barton saw his first cockfight at age 7 — they had other heroes who produced birds that became great fighters. People such as the late Curtis Blackwell of Jasper and the late Harold Brown and Ray Alexander, both of Birmingham.
"We want to be where they were one day," Jimmy Cox said. "And we could be there if everything would go back to normal."
"I would trust the men that I meet at the rooster fights probably seven times more than the men you would meet at a business convention," NeSmith said. "We're good people."
Now, because of the new law against the interstate transportation of fighting birds, Barton says he, NeSmith and their generation will not get a chance to truly replace the past masters.
"We probably won't get to be some heroes for some other kids," he said. That prospect does not trouble Wayne Pacelle. Pacelle is senior vice president of communications and government affairs at the Humane Society of the United States, and the Humane Society pushed hard for shipping restrictions.
Legitimate?
Despite the ban, Pacelle said, breeders who claim they are now selling roosters for breeding or show purposes are actually selling battle roosters.
"There's no legitimate activity that's occurring," Pacelle said. "These people are not selling their birds for meat, they are not selling them for show, they are selling them for cockfights, and in their more honest moments they will tell you that."
To Pacelle, cockfights are an unnatural blood sport even if growers such as Dee Cox speak warmly of their birds and don't eat chicken as a sign of respect for them.
Mindy Gilbert, the animal cruelty investigator for the Greater Birmingham Humane Society, said she has heard breeders speak of their roosters as if they were their children.
But, she said, "I doubt you would put your kids in a circle of dirt and cheer one of them to life and the other to death."
As for the export ban's impact on breeders, Gilbert said, "I think it's going to definitely put some restrictions on some big-time people that are going from state to state and I think that it will cut down somewhat on the sales and shipments across state lines. I think within the boundaries of the state, there will be chicken fighting and chicken selling going on."
Dee Cox, 60, said he still crosses the Alabama line to go to rooster derbies and that he still fights roosters in Oklahoma. He said some of his battlers are birds he puts in fighting condition in Alabama, and others are raised on a game bird farm he owns in the Sooner state.
Asked if using Alabama-bred roosters to fight in Oklahoma might not square with the export ban, Cox said he is shipping birds from one farm to another. "As far as I know, everything is legal," Cox said.
At Blackwater Farms, Chris NeSmith said there is nothing to stop his out-of-state customers from using his breeding or show birds to sire battling roosters. "I can't keep them from doing what they want to do with the birds, but if they break the law ... they won't be sold to anymore," NeSmith said.
Low penalty
Alabama is one of 48 states where cockfighting is illegal, but Pacelle said its penalty for those who host such fights — a fine of up to $50 — is the weakest in the country. Authorities periodically raid cockfighting pits; in late January, officers in DeKalb County raided a pit where a crowd of more than 250 people from five states had gathered. Though authorities have raided the site before, Sheriff Cecil Reed said cockfighting is on the decline in his county, and the new ban on out-of-state rooster shipments has caused a lot of rooster breeders to hang it up.
"I have seen a big decrease in them in the last year or so," Reed said last week. "You don't see'em like you did."
Reed was referring to people who raised battle roosters as a sideline and not as their primary source of income. Larry Mathews, the Oregon-based president of the United Gamefowl Breeders Association, estimates that the nation has about 400,000 game bird breeders, including about 15,000 in Alabama.
Mathews said that right before the shipping ban took effect, many breeders were selling off their battling roosters and taking what they could get for them. Now, he said, there are positive signs: Game bird shows are becoming more popular, and more customers want more brood stock to breed their own battlers. That means they will want both roosters and hens. The demand is pushing up prices, Mathews said, prompting some breeders who got out of the business to get back in.
"I'm not saying we're back where we were, but we're close," Mathews said.
Lawsuit pending
Dee Cox has a game bird farm in Oklahoma where he ships Alabama birds. Cox, Mathews and others also are hoping that in time, a federal court suit against the shipping ban, filed by the United Gamefowl Breeders Association in Louisiana, will be successful. If that happens, breeders such as Cox, Barton and NeSmith say they may be able to resume business as they used to know it and even take their own birds to fight in legally allowed high-stakes pits in Louisiana, Mexico and the Philippines.
The other day, NeSmith was lamenting the law in James Myers' feed and farm supply store, about two miles from Blackwater Farms. Myers, who was born and raised in the area, was sympathetic.
"Everybody used to fight chickens and nobody said nothing about it," Myers said as he stood behind his store counter. "It's crazy."
NeSmith said he could not afford to pay a $15,000 fine for violating the law and added that there are more pressing problems for authorities to deal with than game roosters and cockfighting. But he said cock fighters are an easy target.
"It's good politics just to whack y'all," Myers said.
Source: http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/living/1078136279276970.xml
Cockfighting: Some see art, others savagery
03/07/04
TOM GORDON
News staff writer
In the cockfighting equivalent of the boxing ring, he was so quick and so lethal that most of his matches were over in a matter of seconds
"Ali just never did get hurt," said his Winston County-based owner, Dee Cox. "He'd kill so fast it didn't matter."
Named after boxing's one and only Muhammad, Ali was, like his namesake, a rare champion. While most fighting roosters are good for no more than five or six matches, the dark-red Ali lasted through 22 - and won them all - under Cox's care. He died in retirement at age 18.
"I cried like a baby when he died," said Cox's wife, Jenny.
Ali's pit triumphs won Cox money in more than a few high-stakes contests, but they were also an advertisement for the game birds bred and conditioned at the Bama Sports Farm that he, his son and stepson run in and around the town of Arley.
A new federal law bans the interstate export of roosters for fighting, so breeders say they ship their birds for show and breeding. But since the shipment of battlers once made up about half of Cox's business, and since he has won hefty sums in derbies at home and abroad and has been in the business since he was 12, Cox can talk with authority about breeding and battling.
Birds' bodies, he says, need the right amount of moisture, muscle, weight and quickness. They are fed a diet that includes carrots for good vision in night fights, bananas for potassium to keep them from cramping, charcoal, gravel with certain minerals, ground-up white turkey and lamb chop meat, orange juice and tomatoes.
Cox's stepson, Mike Barton, says it can take about 16 days to train a rooster for a fight, but the process can take even longer. Some of the training and conditioning takes place in a cock house, and Cox has two around Arley. In the cock houses, the roosters can be fitted with small boxing gloves and two of them put in a pit to spar with each other.
Cox likes to film the action to see how the birds can be strengthened or improved. He also likes to put two birds in the pit back-to-back so they have to turn around quickly to defend themselves.
When fight time comes, Cox's roosters are outfitted - on one or both legs - with a curved knife that can be up to 4½ inches long or a sharp metal spur called a gaff. Cox has seen one of his birds fatally wound a similarly equipped rival in the first second of the match. His fowl also have been in duels that lasted more than four hours.
"Some people like it and some don't," Cox said. "To me, it's an art of how good (the roosters') ability is because they're going to fight anyway."
To Mindy Gilbert, the cockfight is not an art, but a primitive scene of savagery. Gilbert, the animal cruelty investigator with the Greater Birmingham Humane Society, saw several cockfights in Mexico about 15 years ago. She found them repugnant.
"What was more offensive to me than the fighting was the behavior of the crowd," Gilbert said. She said spectators' cries grew in volume and the excited expressions on their faces intensified as the fights became bloodier.
"There was something a little bit scary about that blood lust," Gilbert said.
A lot of that lust has to do with the money the members of the audience have riding on the fight. Cox has had matches where the amount of wagers and the number of spectators have run into the thousands.
At one match, when Cox's bird seemed in danger of losing, a man bet him $50 that the then-dominant rival rooster would win, but pledged to pay $1,000 if Cox's rooster won. Four hours later, Cox collected.
Cox said he cares about the birds like Ali that have enabled him to earn a good living. His wife said he cares about them so much that he rarely eats chicken.
"I think they deserve respect not to be eaten by me, as much as they've taken care of me," Cox said.