What Will Be The Right Age To Fight Gamecocks?

"Right Age To fight Gamecocks"
By Jimto - Sabungero

 
When you ask sabungero people what is the right age to introduce gamecocks to fighting, you will get various answers. Some of them especially small backyard breeders will say 9 months, others will say as early as six months they should be trained, while there are also those that believe fighting cocks should be ready for a pit fight when they reach 18 months old.

The approach will actually vary according to the orientation, scientific assessment and well, belief. If you will ask an expert cocker with a gamefarm, some of them would say 2 years old would be best while there are also those who would say 30 months old is the best. So what then is the right age for a fighting cock to be introduced to the rigors of training and fighting?

To answer this question, it is important to bear in mind that a rooster is guided by its instincts to fight. This instinct to fight starts at a very young age of even three months. It is part and parcel of their genetics to fight and we just have to harness their full potential to carry the same instinct up to the pit.

To believe that a rooster barely in its stag age can already have the instinct to die in a fight is not always accurate. A six month old rooster must not be introduced to intense sparring sessions because it still has to develop that courage that only a mature cock can possess.

Try to spar a six month old with a two year old cock and chances are after getting several heavy blows, there is a big chance the youngling will run away. The beating is just too much so its instinct to fight will wither.

Once a stag learns that he can run away as an option, he might take this idea up to old age and you might end up seeing your injured aged cock running away and refuses to peck even if the opponent is already dead just because it got hurt. I’ve seen this many times even in big cockpits. it is the height of embarrassment to be called as a breeder with a gamecock bloodline fit for a marathon competition.

What is important then is to develop the fighting ability, endurance, and gameness of the cock starting from a young age of six months. The approach must be gradual and not exhaustive especially in terms of sparring. As they age, it will be second nature to them and the courage to carry on the fight till death will be developed. Even if the bloodline is said to have deep gameness, it must still be tapped. It is there alright but you have to bring it out to its fullest potential.

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Now, as to the question of what age is the best to fight gamecocks, to answer it directly, is from the time they reach two years old. From two to three years old, they are at their fiercest and strongest. Intelligence also becomes part of the equation if your fighting cock has the age. They haveve been trained to spar and fought with different breeds and from there you can watch their development from the time they started out in training till the time they are ready for the real fight.

A fighting cock that did not exhibit strength and improvement in fighting form after more than one year of training is not a good sign. At an old age, and given the many sparring sessions that they went through, they should have learned at least based on instinct what to do to hurt their opponent more. At any rate, some of the initial signs of fighting style will also be there even when they age so you can already determine early on what to do with them.

So the older they are, the better. This is because gamecocks owners will also try to age their roosters before they fight them. You are at an extreme disadvantage if you will use a stag to fight an aged cock with all other things being equal like weight and height.