Birds from cockfighting ring find sanctuary at local farm

Reporter

CEDAR GROVE — Cockfighting is not a relic of the past. It's happening across the United States, and it's more horrific than you could ever imagine.

Need proof? Pay a visit to Peaceful Fields Sanctuary near Winchester, where founder and owner John Netzel recently rescued a group of hens from central Kentucky that were being forced to hatch chicks that were used to train fighting roosters. He's also part of an ongoing investigation into another suspected cockfighting ring based in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia and is making preparations to house some of those chickens once the ring is shut down.

"Unfortunately, cockfighting is going on everywhere," Netzel said about the outlawed sport that remains popular gamblers who bet on the fights. "It's all about the money."

Peaceful Fields Sanctuary is a nonprofit farm that takes in abused livestock, nurses the animals back to health and provides them a safe, loving home for the rest of their natural lives. Netzel and a squad of volunteers devote their days to caring for a menagerie of goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, pigs, horses, donkeys and more. In the field, there's a Holstein cow named Watson who weighs more than your car. Behind Netzel's house is a flock of turkeys — Ricky, Lucy, Fred and Ethel — who rub up against visitors and, if they like you, dip their wings to show acceptance.

"They're from New York," Netzel said about the turkeys. "You could probably tell by their accents."

Sadly, the friendly, affectionate animals at Peaceful Fields Sanctuary have tragic backstories. For example, there's a donkey whose former owners used to zap him with electric prods just for fun, and there are pygmy goats who suffered brain damage when farmers held red-hot irons against their skulls to stop their horns from growing.

The dozen or so hens rescued about a month ago from the cockfighting ring in Kentucky were confined in cages and forced to lay and hatch eggs.

Male chicks produced by the hens would be taken away after a few weeks, attached to short chains and secured to the open ground. In time, dozens of young roosters with chained legs would fill an outdoor, unsheltered area where they could see each other but have no physical interaction.

Those roosters, which Netzel said are referred to as "practice birds," would be kept until they were needed to train an owner's premier fighting roosters. The training doesn't involve teaching the fighting roosters how to execute attacks, though. Rather, it teaches them to kill, which is not something a chicken would normally do.

"They don't want to kill each other," Netzel said. "It doesn't serve any purpose to them, so they're forced to do that."

One by one, Netzel said, hapless training roosters are tossed in front of fighting roosters that have razors affixed to their legs to maximize the physical damage they can cause. The defenseless training roosters never survive.

"They kill so many roosters in conjunction with the cockfighting that they need to continuously produce more to replace them," Netzel said.

While the practice birds and fighting roosters from the Kentucky cockfighting ring ended up going to other rescue organizations, Peaceful Fields Sanctuary has three previously rescued training roosters — Fruitcup, Steve and Tarzan Bob — who now live in their own individual pens. Netzel said it would be difficult to let them share a pen or wander the farm freely because they never learned how to socialize or interact with other chickens.

When the training roosters first arrived at Peaceful Fields, Netzel said, they were experiencing the animal equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"They actually suffer through huge amounts of emotional trauma," Netzel said. "They really show the same signs [of distress] as people do — nervousness, skittishness, always amped up on adrenaline, always in 'fight or flight' mode. ... They can't chill out because they're constantly in stress mode."

On the other hand, the hens from the Kentucky cockfighting ring are doing great. They finished a three-week quarantine period over the weekend and are now strolling the grounds, moving about freely and socializing with dozens of other chickens at the farm.

Peaceful Fields Sanctuary, a 13-acre farm located at 153 Peacefield Lane near Cedar Grove, is a nonprofit operation whose only means of support is donations from individuals and businesses. It also holds special fundraising events from time to time, including tours, open houses and catered vegan dinners served at the farm.

In addition to money, Netzel said Peaceful Fields also needs people who can help tend to the animals and facilities. It offers monthly training sessions, including one at 10 a.m. Sunday, that show attendees the type of work it takes to run a successful farm.

To learn more about Peaceful Fields Sanctuary and ways to support its mission, visit peacefulfieldssanctuary.org.

— Contact Brian Brehm at [email protected]

Reporter

Mr. Netzel, you are a true angel. People who care about all animals are saints in my book.

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Cockfighting is a horrible sport -- if it can even be called that -- but "forcing" hens to lay eggs and hatch chicks? If that's standard to establish the need for a rescue, we're in a LOT of trouble!

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