Fighting Cocks Midair. - a photo on Flickriver

            
The birds stamp their feet and cock their heads in an uncanny imitation of boxers before a match. They can have their eyes pecked out by a more vigorous adversary. They can be impaled through the brain with one of the plastic spikes that are affixed to the foot of every fighting bird. Or, if a lung is punctured, the end may come in slow, raspy gasps.If you put two roosters together, they will fight,But if you put a thousand hens together, they will never fight. The roosters have this in them.”What does that tell you? 

But in the Dominican Republic, cockfighting is celebrated as a symbol of the country’s warrior spirit. Nearly every neighborhood and country village has a gallera, or cockfighting arena, and the sport is legal and regulated.

There are 1,500 galleras registered with the country’s National Commission of Cockfighting, and the industry employs thousands of people,The roosters begin their day at around 10 a.m., when they are weighed and matched with an opponent, then placed in numbered cages. Next a licensed rooster inspector dressed in white scrubs, uses an acid rinse that change colors when illegal substances are present on the birds’ skin. Overzealous owners sometimes rub tobacco or other chemicals on the roosters, which they believe makes them fight harder,  While a helper holds each rooster’s legs, Then a inspector rubs the rinse into the neck feathers, then wipes the head and beak.By the time the roosters reach the ring they have spent an average of two years preparing for the fight, Their underbellies are shaved and their combs and wattles are surgically removed. Many were hatched from hens with a record of mothering good fighting birds. They are fed a diet of special grains, vitamins and antibiotics. The feathers are trimmed just so by professional groomers. 

Cockfighting is especially popular in the countryside,in the Dominican Republic “They play baseball, they play stickball, and they have cockfights,” On Sundays, the women go to church, and the men go to the cockfight.”I will never forget the time when my friends and I were leaving a fight one time in Thailand as we were out in

the parking lot, as the buzzer signaled the start of another fight, a stray dog weaving between cars had something in its mouth.

It was the head of a fallen rooster.

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Taken on: March 19, 2010

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