Llamado Tayo
Know Your Cock by Heart
Handle your cocks with tender loving care; they can appreciate and reciprocate love.
Know yourself is an age-old dictum in warfare. In cocking, you also have to know your cock.
After you have selected your champions, the next thing to do is to know them individually.
Man and rooster should get to know each other more. A good conditioner always endeavors to find out more about his cock. Know your cock and half the battle is won, as the great Chinese general Sun Tzu would have said.
It is not enough that you note your cock’s fighting weight. It is also important to know if he likes to be moved around more, or he fights better if just left on his own for days, say in a fly pen or on the tie cord.
One of the first things you should check on a newly acquired cock is his metabolic rate. You would want to know whether this particular cock gets fat or heavy easily or whether he needs more amount of feeds to stay in shape. One way of knowing the metabolic rate of your chicken is to set a standard amount of feeds for a certain weight group.
For instance, using my maintenance feeds of 50-50 pigeon pellets and concentrate, I feed 35 grams per feeding for cocks weighing 1.8 to 2 kilos. I can determine more or less the metabolism of the individual cocks by monitoring which ones get overweight, which ones fall under the ideal weight and which one maintain the right weight.
This knowledge is important once you get into the pre-conditioning and conditioning stages, as you will know then whether this cock needs more exercise and less feeds or the other way around.
Know the cock’s natural bio-rhythm. Know what it loves to do. Know the fighting weight, the right body feel, the right diet. Most of all, always handle your cocks with tender loving care. They are living things that can appreciate and reciprocate love.
Keep a sparring record. From it you can more or less judge the respective bio-rhythm of your cocks. An experiment conducted by RB Sugbo Gamefowl Technology showed that most cocks have about two weeks upside performance, two weeks downside. Meaning, they reach peak performance about once every month.
After peaking they experience a down curve for two weeks, or two sparring sessions if you spar your cocks weekly. Then, afterwards, they start peaking again.
This might explain the old tradition of timing the fight of a certain cock on a certain stage of the moon cycle. The lunar cycle is also 28 days or two two-week periods.
But a few cocks have a longer cycle of three weeks, and rare are the cocks that consistently performed well every week.
Know your cock well and it’s a way to victory.
A
fter you know your cock, leave him alone. Yes, do not push your cock too hard.
There was a scientific study that showed birds (gamefowl are birds) have little room in the brain for learning new tricks. They mostly act on instinct. So, you cannot teach a cock how to fight, you cannot train a cock to break high, you cannot tell the cock to shuffle hard. Just know if a cock can do any or all of these, and thus, try to naturally enhance these attributes through ample exercise, good care, right nutrition and an ideal environment.
Some cockers in an effort to dramatically improve their cocks’ performance resort to heavy table workouts. Others give their birds steroids, hormones and stimulants.
But what I learned from the masters is that no amount of feeds, additives or training can make a good cock out of a bad one. Over feeding and over training will never make an ace out of a bum cock. On the contrary, it can easily make a bum cock out of an ace.
After years of keenly observing, asking around and learning, I have formulated a cocking principle which I called the art of least intervention.
Once I find a good cock, I proceed to know it from head to toe, so to speak. I would learn what kind of body feel and in what weight it fights best. I would learn whether it loves to be well rested or it fights best when made hyper active. Then I give exactly what it wants.
In the later part of this book, you will read my pre-conditioning and conditioning methods. You will find mine simpler than most other systems.
I do not table-work my cocks. Except those with very low metabolism or those that love to be over exercised. If I do table exercises, it is only when necessary to fine tune the wing and leg muscles.
My exercises are mainly limited to rotation from tie cord to conditioning pens to fly pens to scratch box to 3x3 wire pens. In the early morning before sunrise, I do a little salida, kahig at sampi under artificial light in the sparring pit.
For overweight cocks, I put them back down the ground every time they try to perch at sundown. When they fly up the roost I place them back on the ground. When they fly again I put them down again. Five or six repetitions of this every day will help the cock lose weight.
I spar my cocks once a week, for two or three rounds every session. In sparring I put premium on developing the cocks’ alertness and focus. I do this by pitting them close, three feet apart, in the first round and allowing only two buckles or hits. In the second round I set them about six feet apart and for four buckles. I rest them for a couple of minutes and then spar them again this time far apart and for a longer period. However, I always make it a point to break them as soon as either of the cocks manages a bill hold.
As to conditioning aids, I don’t use any steroids, hormones or stimulants. I inject vitamin b complex every 15 days and give regularly other vitamin and mineral pills, directly or through their drinking water; and some electrolytes on hot days. Other than those, I rely on my regular feeds.
I love to just watch my cocks, to observe them how they are doing going through the count down to fight day. I love to watch them scratch, watch them fly, watch them walk inside the conditioning pen, and watch them gobble up all the feeds. I specially love to watch them at sunrise, when they seem to be at their best.
I don’t push my cocks. I don’t even condition my cocks. I just watch them condition themselves—this I learned from the masters; and this I call the science of least intervention.
Mga pasabong ng MANA
Sa November 18 ang susunod na pasabong ng MANA-Lu sa Pasay Cockpit. Ang kikitain ng pasabong ng Manalu sa Pasay ay mapupunta sa kanilang street children feeding activity sa Tondo sa susunod na buwan. Makipagugnayan lang tayo kay kamanang Loreto Casalhay, 0918-271-3548.
Sa December 15 naman ang pasabong ng MANA Cavite sa Arcontica Coliseum. 1-cock fastest kill ulutan ito at marami at malalaki ang papremyo nila kamanang Gani Dominguez. Ang MANA-Cavite ay ang pinakamalaki at pinaka aktibong chapters ng MANA sa buong Luzon. Mamimigay ang MANA ng mga libreng Manwal ng MANA sa Makabagong Pamamaraan ng Pagpili at Pagkundisyon sa mga lalahok. Suportahan po natin ang pasabong nila. Kontak kamana Gani, 0928-521-2513.
3-cocks sa Baras
May 3-cock derby sa Baras, Rizal sa December 11. Ang promoter po nito ay si kamanang Gilbert and friends. Todo suporta po sa paderbeng ito ang MANA Rizal na pinamumunuan ni kamana Jun Santos.
P150,000 ang guaranteed prize at P3,300 lang ang entry fee. P 3,300 din ang minimum bet.Sponsored po ito ng Bmeg. Assisted by Boss Abet, Rizal Cyber Cockers at Masang Nagmamanok (MANA) Inc.
Ang kikitain po nito ay mapupunta sa mga biktima ng typhoon ondoy.
For more details text nyo lang si kamanang Jun Santos 0908-895-9623, o si kamana Gilbert mismo, 0927-289-8313.
Patuloy lang po tayong magbasa ng Larga at magpunta sa tilaok.blogspot.com para sa mga balita at karagdagang kaalaman sa pagmamanok at mga kaganapan hinggil sa Masang Nagmamanok (MANA).
