08 August 1999
Fancy cocks
http://www.suntimes.co.za/Old English Game are the princes of the poultry world,
'IF THEY legalised cockfighting tomorrow I would be a millionaire in two weeks," Barney Barnard jokes. I think he was joking, but then despite the bravado and exaggeration Barnard knows what he's talking about.
For one thing, he's a fighter himself. He made his fortune selling precast concrete walls on the East Rand and at 61 had beaten cancer. He is a man of strong passions - horseracing, arum lilies, of which he has a vast collection, and Old English Game fowl, which he breeds here but fights in the US.
Barnard is chairman of the Oxford Old English Game Fowl Club of South Africa, and the driving force behind it, for the club runs from his smallholding north of Benoni. His home has a pub devoted to the breed, spangled with paintings, photographs, mementoes, silver trophies, awards, figurines of fowls and even a stuffed prize hen. There is another pub down in his clubhouse at the bottom of the garden, also packed with memorabilia. Game fowls are his obsession and have been since he was 18.
Barnard was a close friend of my father, who also bred game fowl, but I had not seen him for 20 years or more. Last week I went to the club's annual show in Benoni and refreshed old memories of magnificent birds. My dad, he told me, was a true fancier. As these men are as competitive as their cocks, compliments are hard - earned, so I appreciated it.
Barnard's Putfontein property is a rabbit warren of fowl runs and a cacophony of crowing. He keeps about 300 birds but today many more have been flown and driven in from all over the country, many travelling in cardboard fruit boxes which ill become their dignity. Breeders hang around the parking lot while the judges inspect their finest fowls, which are all nonchalantly scratching around for mealies and crowing boastfully in row upon row of eyelevel pens. Some are tame, some are, well, pretty cocky, and take a flying kick at you if you get too close. "Legs too wide, too open at the back, too pointed in the breast ... ," the judges mumble to assistants as they handle the birds individually before returning them to the cage.
These are pampered birds, unlikely ever to meet an eye-level oven, even when imperfect. "They're tough as shit," Barnard jokes, "you can't eat them. But I know a guy who braaied them for his daughter's wedding and told everyone they were pheasants. They believed it." Barnard does give unwanted birds to his workers to eat, turning over their water bowl signals their impending fate.
About 40 breeders are exhibiting at the show, out of about 120 in the country. They come from all walks of life - farmers, retired policemen, life insurance brokers. Like Barnard they know their birds individually and they know their lineage - where they got the bloodline from and whom they have given birds to. (Barnard has fowls descended from those bred by my father 25 years ago.) It's not as formally documented as a racehorse's pedigree and not every fowl has even earned a name, but there is something equally aristocratic about this hobby, a dedicated search for excellence.
Like any fanatics, these men - and it seems to be a boys' thing - do it for the love of it. There used to be prize money, a few hundred rand, but the members have decided to do away with this as they would prefer trophies to keep.
"If you did it for the money I don't think you would survive," says Hennie Veldman from Newcastle. In retirement, he spends four or five hours a day with his 100 birds, which cost about R400 a month to feed. "This guy's a film star," he says of a winning grey which clearly enjoys posing and looking good.
After the show, an auction of unwanted birds raises a bit of extra money for the club, with prices as low as R50. Although a prize fowl can fetch as much as R5000, it is an easy hobby to start, but not an easy one to maintain. "Sometimes a guy will come and buy a breeding pair," Barnard laughs, "and the next day he brings them right back because the wife or the neighbours won't take the noise."
In many urban areas it's illegal to keep chickens or livestock other than the usual pets. "It's a nice clean hobby but health laws have caused game fowls to decline and die out," Barnard says. "People don't complain about the noise from traffic or trucks, but if a game fowl crows at dawn all hell breaks loose." One Durban breeder kept hundreds of birds on the Bluff for years until he moved to the more rural Waterfall area, only to be petitioned and opposed by local residents. He won in the end, but most breeders are now limited to smallholdings like Barnard's, which in itself is precarious. The doyen of South African fowl fanciers, Bud Martens, was murdered on his plot near Durban many years ago. Another leading breeder, Errol Boy of East London, was gunned down this year. "It's a dying sport today and many have left the game," says Barnard.
Today, luckier men are gathered in the pub, for after all that is where likeminded men have always discussed the finer points of anything. A club without a pub would be pointless, but this one has no cricket or rugby icons, only those of birds originally born and bred for blood sport.
From a locked display cabinet Barnard shows me his collection of spurs and knives, which in the past were used to enhance a cock's natural spurs. They include crude Mexican spurs and a pair of beautifully curved spurs found down a Cornish tin mine. Since Phoenician times the men of Cornwall traded in tin and game fowl, and the county was a centre of cockfighting as a blood sport.
"These blades were sharper than razors," Barnard explains, holding up what look like lethal miniature scimitars, "and could cut up through a piece of paper without bucking it. They only lasted for a few fights, and the fights were over very quickly." As they had been glued to the green baize I presumed they were just for show.
The use of spurs is far from cruel. Because they are more lethal and efficient than a bird's own spurs, they quickly end a fight that could otherwise drag on for hours. Cocks' natural spurs are regularly cut off - this usually has to be done to prevent birds being damaged in accidental fights - and the metal ones strapped or bound on. The secret, Barnard says, is to place them at the exact angle of the originals or the cock will misjudge his blows. Barnard has attended legal fights in Madagascar where spurs are covered and the loser, after four or five hours, is the bird that first drops its head to the ground in exhaustion. His face registers disapproval, for all sports have their codes of conduct.
The club's connection with Oxford has more than snob appeal, for the Oxford club was founded in 1886 by Herbert Atkinson of Ewelme, the doyen of "The Fancy", as it was called. His aim was to preserve old British game or fighting cocks "from spoilation or from being transformed into a useless fancy breed in the hands of unsuccessful commercial poultry dealers and prize hunters". Fighting had been banned in England in 1856 and the best British bloodlines exported to the US at the end of the 19th century. Atkinson was a renowned authority on the birds, a writer, painter and defender of cockfighting. He helped establish the first Oxford Club in South Africa in the '20s, but it subsequently disappeared. The present club is 11 years old and is affiliated to the British one. (The SA Poultry Association has for many years also shown Old English Game along with other breeds of fowl, the Oxford Club is dedicated to large and bantam Old English Game.)
Generations of enthusiasts have come and gone, some taking their bloodlines with them. Jimmy Abrahams, a prominent breeder in the '50s, imported many excellent fowls from England at a time when such imports were easier, but never shared his progeny. When he died his unique bloodline died out. "A good family was lost and we will never see them again," Barnard says with some disapproval. He, by contrast, boasts that most of the best birds in this country can be traced to his yard, and revels in stories of less-than-honest exhibitors whom he caught out crowing their success at shows with birds bought from him days before.
The breeding and fighting of cocks goes back to the Romans, if not before. Caesar commented that the ancient Britons kept fowls for pleasure and diversion but not for food, and for centuries every English town and village boasted a cock pit - at one time fighting was practised at schools every Shrove Tuesday. Redruth in Cornwall had a pre-Roman pit which survived until taken over by Wesleyan preachers in 1843. Henry VIII built a pit in Whitehall, and that of Charles II in St James' Park was demolished in 1824. The last public fight in England was held in Newcastle in 1853.
Fighting cocks is illegal in this country but probably existed for centuries. It is hard to imagine that the ships which took the original Jungle Fowl of India, Ceylon and Malaysia back to England did not lose a few at the Cape - the Western Cape has a strong tradition of Malay fowl. It was the fighting birds of India which went into making the present version of Old English Game Fowl, a feisty breed that has been known to kill foxes.
Horseracing and cockfighting long went hand in hand, so when horses came to Turffontein in Johannesburg, so did the game fowl. Perhaps thanks to isolation and selective imports, South African game fowl are today pure-bred and of a high standard, despite the ban on fighting. Still, breeders enjoy an urban legend about a fight many decades ago which was "bust" by the police. One of those present was the local magistrate, who was hidden in a barrel of lucerne while everyone else was arrested. When they appeared in court it was before the same magistrate, who fined each man a pound and whispered: "See you Saturday."
Fighting is, however, legal in five states of the US - Oklahoma, Arizona, Arkansas, New Mexico and South Carolina - where it is a multimilliondollar industry that has easily withstood attempts to curb it.
The annual Hawaiian Derby in Ardmore, Oklahoma, attracts 2500 participants who each enter seven cocks. Barnard keeps 1000 fowls on 26ha and has his own cock pit in Kelwin, Oklahoma. He fights them in the derby, which runs non-stop over a three day weekend. Fights can end in 15 seconds thanks to the spurs.
Would Barnard like cockfighting legalised in South Africa? "Undoubtedly," he says, "in the interests of the breed. Fighting keeps game fowl in their pure form, as demonstrated by the decline in British breeding stock, today far outshone by that of America or South Africa. The birds that are left are pathetic."
But is it cruel? "You can't force a cock to fight," he smiles. Others might argue that even for a chicken, to die in battle at the age of seven is more dignified and noble than to do so on in a factory at 40 days.
Atkinson put it better: "The Game Cock was reared in every luxury and enjoyed life and liberty for two years; he was then taken over by the Feeder and as much care bestowed on his diet and training as any other Athlete. When in perfect condition he was fairly matched against an antagonist of the same weight armed with similar weapons, which shortened the combat and gave less poisonous wounds than his natural weapons. His greatest desire in life was gratified, for a true-bred Cock will leave wives, food and all else to find and fight to the death any Cock near, and it is beyond human power to make him fight if he does not desire to."
He attributed the banning of fighting to "the degeneration of the times".
"The crowds that fill the music halls, picture palaces, and attend football matches, are these more virile, healthy and better citizens than their grandfathers who attended the Cock-pits and prize rings?" Atkinson died in 1926, the Fancy lives on.
The Oxford Old English Game Fowl Club can be contacted at PO Box 8049, Putfontein 1513
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