co*ckfighting Is Illegal in the U.S. Why Does It Breed so Many Fighting Birds? (Published 2023) (2024)

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According to some rooster men, the game fowl, or fighting chicken, was almost chosen to be the national bird of America. “And it should’ve,” a breeder once told me. “An eagle ain’t nothing more than a glorified buzzard.” Such game-fowl lore and sentiment abound: George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were devoted rooster fighters. Union and Confederate soldiers put aside their differences on Sundays during the Civil War to pit their chickens against one another. Abraham Lincoln was given the nickname Honest Abe after he displayed impartiality as a co*ckfighting judge. Whatever the (dubious) historical merit of claims like these, they are meant to establish the deeply American identity of game fowl. “They fought them right out on the White House lawn,” says David Thurston, president of the United Gamefowl Breeders Association, a national nonprofit dedicated to the birds’ preservation.

Such conviction exists in stark contrast with the state of co*ckfighting in the country today. Taking part in the practice, which consists of strapping metal spurs to the legs of two chickens and confining them to a pit to fight each other to the death, is now illegal in all 50 states, and it has been since Louisiana was the last to outlaw co*ckfighting in 2007. It has been banned in all 16 U.S. territories since 2019. Federal law also makes it a crime to “knowingly sell, buy, possess, train, transport, deliver or receive” any chicken across state lines for fighting purposes.

As a result, the business of breeding these birds has gone largely underground, with a focus on international co*ckfighting, in countries like Mexico, Peru and Vietnam. In the Philippines, the selling of and gambling on birds generate billions of dollars a year in revenue. On Facebook, despite the platform’s prohibition against the sale of animals, thousands of roosters — Roundheads, Clarets, Asils, Blueface Hatches, Flarry Eye Greys, Spangled Butchers, Pearl-Legged Kelsos — are advertised for sale on any given day, though there is always some sort of disclaimer stating that the birds are “not for illegal use,” as one seller puts it. A quick private message will yield a price quote from one of hundreds of breeders across the United States. A Flarry Eye stag, from Feather-Cut Gamefowl in southeastern Texas, can be yours for $600, shipping included. A Mug stag from Coal Miner Mugs Gamefowl Farm, in northern Mississippi, for $600. A Ginn Grey Toppy stag, from Pinnon Hatch Farms in central Missouri, for $400. (Translation: Ginn is the last name of the breeder who created the blood line, supposedly in the 1800s; gray is the dominant feather coloring; “toppy” refers to a tuft of feathers on the head; and “stag” is a young rooster.)

In another, he and a co-host flank a man in Oklahoma named Kenny Jack. Dozens of roosters are bathed in golden sunlight behind them.