left several frightened children behind for law enforcement officers to deal with. Brought by parents or other relatives and admitted by pit operators, impressionable children receive the message that cruelty and violence for fun is acceptable and that laws and those who enforce them are to be feared. Law enforcement agents should be prepared to deal with the possibility of children being present during enforcement actions. The gamecock Most likely, the oldest breeds of chickens are the game or fighting breeds, such as the red jungle fowl of India. It is generally agreed that all varieties and strains of domestic chickens are descended from jungle fowl. After humans domesticated these colorful wild fowl, they selected the most durable and tenacious birds for breeding purposes. As a result of this intense selection, gameness and fighting prowess became all-important, and the Old English Games came to be. The Old English Games were the most widely distributed of the European games and became popular throughout the world. Consequently, independent varieties developed in several countries, including the United States and Australia. The Modern English Games were developed through crosses of Old English Games with the Malay by exhibition fanciers during the mid-19th century. While these fowl and other breeds are also bred for show purposes, it should be remembered that raising birds for exhibition and raising birds for fighting are not mutually exclusive activities. A complete description of all the recognized breeds and varieties of gamefowl is not necessary for the purposes of this manual. While color and markings are important for exhibition fowl, their physical qualities are also desirable in a fighting cock. Generally, a mature gamecock resembles a rooster whose comb, wattles and earlobes have been surgically removed (dubbed). This operation is usually performed 50 The Humane Society of the United States using scissors without benefit of anesthesia shortly before the male bird reaches sexual maturity. There are several reasons given for dubbing roosters. Some poultry experts advise that the appendages are prone to injury and infections and that removing the comb prevents the problems associated with frostbite in colder climates. Although cockfighters and exhibitors of gamefowl both believe that a dubbed gamecock looks significantly truer to breed, cockfighters know that the absence of these parts will reduce the bird’s overall weight and lessen the opportunity for injury (a comb will bleed profusely when cut and can seriously impair the bird’s sight and fighting ability). Another alteration cockfighters make to fighting roosters is to saw off the natural spur, leaving only a one-half-inch stump to serve as an anchor point for attaching the artificial spurs or gaffs. Although most cockfighters do this, others leave the natural spur intact for matches against other naked-heel roosters, or those without gaffs. Training, conditioning and fight preparation Although cockfighters frequently claim that gamecocks do not need to be trained to fight and that the birds can be characterized as aggressive and tenacious, the idea that staging a cockfight is nothing more than providing an opportunity for the birds to do what they do naturally is erroneous. In truth, gamefowl are the product of centuries of breeding for the quality of gameness, and serious cockfighters subject their birds to an intensive program of training and conditioning called a keep before a scheduled fight. Most keeps last about two weeks and are preceded by a two-week pre-keep in which the birds to be fought are removed from the yard and placed in separate coops or stalls near the area where most of the training will take place. During the keep, the fighting cock follows a Specialized cases
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