Cops in the Nevada desert rescued nearly 500 roosters and arrested three suspects in a massive cockfighting bust on Tuesday — near a brothel called “Chicken Ranch.”
Bodycam footage from cops in Nye County — which hosts three legal cathouses — shows hundreds of birds penned up in one of two desert ranches where sheriff’s deputies also seized 11 firearms and $60,000 in cash.
Deputies also found dozens of “gaffs” — razors attached to roosters’ legs to heighten the carnage in the savage bloodsport — during the weeklong investigation.
The 478 birds were hidden away in the unincorporated town of Pahrump, home of the Chicken Ranch brothel.
The birds were held in row upon row of cages with little shelter from the desert sun, the footage shows.
The three suspects include one man on a permanent residence card, one whose immigration status is pending, and one who is undocumented, according to the Nye County Sheriff’s Office, which conducted the raid with help from Homeland Security Investigations.
Between them, they face more than 300 counts of owning a bird for the purpose of cockfighting, plus dozens of animal abuse charges.
A neighbor living near one of the sites said the sounds of tortured roosters “kept getting bigger and louder” until the landowner expanded the lot and put a fence around it, she told 8 News Now.
“I just had a feeling that there was something going on behind that fence,” the neighbor told the outlet.