![]() ![]() |
Animal Defenders of Westchester |
|
![]()
Home Page We advocate on all animal protection and exploitation issues, including experimentation, factory farming, rodeos, breeders and traveling animal acts. Animal Defenders of Westchester |
Campaigns
Felipe the Former Cockfighter Published on the front page of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, JULY 15, 2005:
When Bad Chickens The Joneses Have Rehab Plan By AMIR EFRATI Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL July 15, 2005; Page A1 PRINCESS ANNE, Md. -- Felipe, an orange-feathered rooster from
Pennsylvania, faced near-certain death when police busted his cockfighting
match on a rural compound in 2001. Instead, he checked into the Eastern
Shore Chicken Sanctuary. After three weeks of psychological treatment, the 1�-foot-tall fowl
kicked his drug habit and stopped picking fights. Today, he lives peacefully
with 200 other feathered residents at the center, often cozying up to a
flock of Florida hens. Felipe was lucky. Most of the millions of roosters bred for cockfighting
in the U.S. face a gruesome end. If they're not slaughtered during combat,
they are often euthanized after police break up illegal tournaments. Cockfights are legal only in Louisiana and New Mexico, but illegal
combats and betting are common throughout the country, where there are an
estimated 100,000 gamecock breeders. The fights, which take place in an
enclosed area, end when one of the duelers dies or one of the handlers
concedes victory. They can last more than 30 minutes and can generate tens
of thousands of dollars in winnings. To prepare the birds, breeders trim their combs, wattles and earlobes to
reduce weight. They inject the roosters with testosterone and
methamphetamines and snip their spurs -- nails on the back of rooster legs
-- replacing them with 3-inch steel blades. The roosters fly up into the air
and dig the blades into rivals' flesh. Fight survivors are generally considered too violent to be saved, and
some states have laws requiring that they be killed. In California 5,000
roosters have been eliminated over the past five years, according to the
Humane Society of the United States. Most farmed-animal sanctuaries accept hens, but few take in roosters. And even animal-rights groups generally say it's not worth their time to
rehabilitate fighting roosters. In fact they often oversee the euthanasia,
which usually involves injecting a poison into the roosters' chest. "It would take a staff years to rehabilitate these birds," says Martin
Mersereau, a manager at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an
animal-rights group. Not so, says Pattrice Jones, co-director of the Eastern Shore Chicken
Sanctuary, an unusual rehab center for chickens that also accepts gamecocks.
Ms. Jones, who holds a master's in clinical psychology, says
rehabilitation of the former fighters consists of detoxification and
behavioral modification, which includes punishing bad behavior. The retired
combatants also undergo "systematic desensitization," or gradual exposure to
what they've been trained to fear. In this case: other roosters. Some 50 former fighting roosters have checked into the sanctuary since it
was founded five years ago. Ms. Jones says that even the most ferocious fowl
take at most several weeks to pacify. "After they're rehabbed, they end up
being the sweetest roosters here," she says. Ms. Jones, who teaches public speaking at the University of Maryland,
Eastern Shore, and her domestic partner Miriam Jones, a high-school English
teacher, founded the sanctuary when they moved to the Delmarva Peninsula.
There, more than 500 million chickens are slaughtered each year at the
processing plants of chicken-meat producers such as Perdue Farms and Tyson
Foods. Longtime animal-rights activists, the couple would find stray
escapees on the roads and started taking them in. As they collected more feathered residents, they converted their garage
into a coop with hay and rows of perches. With financial help from family,
friends and other donors, they expanded the center over three outbuildings
and three foraging yards on 2� wooded acres. Today, it costs the couple $10,000 a year to run the center. In late 2001, a concerned citizen phoned the Joneses to inform them that
police had busted a cockfighting ring on a Pennsylvania farm and that a
local humane society had rounded up some 20 roosters in order to euthanize
them. The Joneses agreed to take in Felipe and two other survivors. When they
brought him to the sanctuary, Felipe's chest and leg feathers had been
shaved off by his handler and his bottom beak was cracked. He was so aggressive that he would fly up at any other bird that crossed
his path, Pattrice Jones recalls. For the first two days of his rehabilitation, Ms. Jones kept Felipe in a
cage out of sight -- but within earshot -- of other birds, allowing him to
adjust to the clucking of hens and roosters. When she took him out to the
yard, Ms. Jones would calm Felipe by clutching him close to her chest so he
could feel her heart beat. Slowly, she let him mingle with the other birds
and when he picked a fight, Ms. Jones would lock him up. After three weeks,
Felipe gave up. "Roosters fight from fear of death, not from natural aggression," says
Ms. Jones. On a recent hot afternoon, a cacophony of rooster crows, hen clucks and
raspy duck quacks swirled around the sanctuary as Pablo, a former Alabama
fighting rooster with green-and-black tail feathers, dust-bathed and
stretched out in the sun. Saturn, a white-feathered rooster who needed three
full weeks of rehab, napped in the main coop with the hens. Julio, a
raggedy-looking former fighter who was found in a Bronx schoolyard, lay in
the shade. At 3 p.m., two U.S. Department of Agriculture employees pulled into the
Jones' driveway, past a sign with the words "Respect our Animals. They are our Family." They unloaded two roosters, a hen and a duck. The spurs on one rooster, found running down Georgia Avenue in
Washington, D.C., had been ground to stubs -- the clear sign of a cockfight
combatant. After two days of captivity, Blackbeard, a graceful rooster with
multicolored feathers, had already relaxed, Pattrice Jones says. He got into
a short scuffle with a rooster called Sunshine and befriended Bollywood, a
juvenile broiler rooster. As for Felipe, he now spends most of his days taking walks and foraging
for food in the woods. At night, he sleeps in the woods, often cuddling up
with Ebony and Blackbird, two black hens from Florida. Write to Amir Efrati at
[email protected] LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: [email protected]
Fair Use Notice: This document may contain
copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the
copyright owners. We believe that this not-for-profit, educational use on
the Web constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for
in section 107 of the US Copyright Law). If you wish to use this copyrighted
material for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain
permission from the copyright owner. |
Your comments and
inquiries are welcome
This site is hosted and maintained by:
The Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman Family Foundation
Thank you for visiting all-creatures.org.
Since