The Beginning

The blakliz, a bloodline of excellent game fowl created and developed by RB Sugbo Gamefowl Technology, is named after wife Liza. I felt she deserved the honor for being such a good hen to our five children. The play of words also reflected our breeder’s dream that someday the bloodline will be so dreaded that it would be blacklisted from the cockpits. Dreaming is one thing, facing reality another. We knew there would never be such much- feared a bloodline of game fowl. So after years of developing the Blakliz, we were more than happy just to find the blakliz as the best among our humble repertoire of not so great but decent bloodlines that could compete with dignity in the country’s tough derbies.
 

Only now that we were fully convinced that the blakliz is the best in our arsenal that we decided to breed the blakliz extensively. It was just recently, in years 2010 and 2011 to be exact, that we concluded that the blakliz was ready for the toughest battles after testing the bloodline in the stag seasons year after year. Beginning 2012 we would be fighting more blakliz stags, and making available to buyers and client sets of blakliz brood fowl. We are confident the blakliz will live up to expectations. We see it as one of the bloodlines of the future. It seems everybody is ordinarily breeding sweaters, roundheads, kelsos, hatches, buliks, golds and other common bloodlines. So why be just ordinary when you may breed the blakliz.
 

By different, we mean not only in looks, but also in fighting ability. In looks, the original blakliz is actually just sort of a combination of the brown red and the mug. However, they are very much unlike the sweater, roundhead, kelso that fill the pits. They are also dissimilar from the now popular off-colors buliks, golds and whites.
The difference is more in the fighting ability. The blakliz has no particular fighting style. It is neither typically angat, nor flier, nor rusher, nor shuffler. But it might be able to do any or all of the above if the situation requires as the blakliz has intelligence, agility and speed. It is intelligent enough to discern what ought to be done in a certain situation. It is agile enough to execute what it thinks ought to be done. And, it is fast and quick enough to do it ahead of the opponent.
So welcome to the world of the Blakliz.
 

The Beginning
 

Year 2000 when I decided to quit my jobs from government and the media. I went back to my true love, caring for the game fowl. After all I had been in the rooster game long before I became a newspaperman, PR practitioner and public affairs consultant. I was a professional feeder and handler in Cebu for nearly two decades in the 1970s and 80’s. Thanks God, for my success as a professional rooster man that enabled me to lay the foundation that have supported my growing family.On my come-back to sabong, I had wanted to produce just a few head of chickens for my personal satisfaction and for fighting. But, later, on suggestion by a very good friend Erning Panuncillo (deceased), to make available to ordinary sabungeros and upstart breeders high quality bloodlines at affordable prices. At the time I had no experience in breeding, so I did my homework.
 

First I studied the intricacies of breeding by devouring all the reading materials about the subject I could get hold of. I also drew a lot of ideas from my experience as rooster fighting man through most of my life and incorporated them with what I learned from my research. Also, at about that time, books, magazines and tv shows on sabong started proliferating, thus, it did not take long for me to acquire a wealth of knowledge on breeding the game fowl. I also visited long time and old friends in the sabong world to consult with them. It is on one of such visits that I found the inspiration to breed the blakliz. I was at the place of an uncle, Ebing Kintanar, a lawyer, public prosecutor and RTC Judge, who had been a famous cocker in Cebu. At the time of my visit he was already on semi-retirement from cockfighting. Among the few remaining stock at his yard was a brown red cock that caught my attention. It turned out to be a Richard Bates black cross that had already won 6 times. It was already more than four years old then, but was still set for another fight. When we sparred the cock, I was impressed by its fighting ability. I asked my uncle if I could have him. Being a 6-time winner and with good looks and excellent fighting attributes, the old cock deserved to be a brood cock. After all, in a fast sport like ours, a three time winner is already hard to come by, let alone a six-timer.
 

The problem was my uncle had already committed to join the fiesta derby in our hometown and he was somewhat short of chickens, so he had to include the old cock in the selection. He told me though to come back after the derby, because anyway the brown red would surely win, he quipped. True enough it won. And, I got my first brood cock. My uncle also let me have an imported blue face hen given to him by a client. I brought the pair home, already toying with the name blackliz for the bloodline they will found. Black because I anticipated producing black chickens and liz, after my wife Liz. Much later, I changed the spelling from blackliz to blakliz. Removing the letter ―c― somehow sharpened the name.
 

Thus, the blakliz started with a cross between a 7-time winner 5-year old Richard Bates black and an equally aging blue face hen. That was in 2001. The mating only produced 2 pullets and no stag. The health of the brood cock started deteriorating after the first season, apparently, due to the many wounds sustained in battle, so I was not able to breed it again. The following year I acquired ponkan, the original brood cock that eventually founded our ponkan bloodline. On the sidelines, ponkan was then also bred to one of the black pullets of the brown red x blue face mating. The following year a couple of the black offspring were then bred back to ponkan in a back-to-father line breeding. Despite being 3/4 of ponkan’s blood, there were still some black pullets and brown red stags among the offspring. There were eight stags in all. Five of the stags were dark red and only three were brown reds. Since I was after the dark plumage, I gave away the reddish stags to friends and relatives. I kept the three brown reds and single mated them to their black sisters. I also discarded the reddish pullets.
 

Two of the brown red stags I bred were named ―sipsip‖ and ―butsukoy‖ (Cebuano slang that roughly translates to smart or naughty). Butsukoy was called as such because every time I open the door leading to feed stock room, he immediately rushed in ahead of me to partake of the feed inside. On the other hand, sipsip made it a routine to fly to my shoulder, as if to please me to gain some favor in return or to make sipsip, every time I emerged from the stock room carrying the pale of feed. As result sipsip always got the first peck at the ration.
 

At the end of the breeding season I conditioned and fought the three brown reds and fought them in a 3-cock derby despite their tender age of just 13 months. This was in order to test the mettle of the brothers and in effect the bloodline I am trying to set. Sipsip and butsukoy won handily and quickly. The unnamed one lost after almost 8 minutes despite being crippled in the opening buckles. I was happy with what happened. The two winners proved that the bloodline can kill quickly. The loser showed that there might be some endurance and gameness in them too. As bull stag butsukoy won twice more and lost his fourth fight. While sipsip also won two more fights and got retired as a test brood cock for our organic yards.
 

In 2004 I fought eight sons of sipsip, butsukoy and the unnamed one as stags. Of the three sons of butsukoy only one won and two lost. A son of the unnamed one won, another lost. All three of sipsip sons won. The total was five wins three loses. Not bad, especially considering that they were in-bred products of already in-bred brother-sister matings. What was not good was the fact that of the five winners four died due to mortal wounds inflicted during the fights. The other one was too badly blemished that it had to be euthanized. Therefore, not one of the eight sons of sipsip, butsukoy and the unnamed one managed to survive to fight another day. Another alarming thing with the result was the downtrend of the pit performance from the preceding to the current generation. While sipsip and his brothers won a total of six fights against two loses, their offspring only won five out of eight.
 

Two things were immediately clear: First, sipsip, with all three sons winning their fights, was the better producer among the brothers. (The mother was also marked as the better producer among the sisters.); second, that the current generation was no better, or even worse, than the previous generation, so it was not worth keeping. So no further testing was necessary. Already, this early, something had to be done about the bloodline. Clearly sipsip and his mate had the better offspring, thus I kept all the black pullets out of sipsip and discarded the pullets out of butsukoy and the unnamed one. I further concluded that the line characteristically absorbed blows because regardless of the fights’ outcome, win or loss, they invariably came out of the pit badly damaged. With Erning and other friends we diagnosed the problem as lack of speed. They packed some power and cut well, but they were not fast enough to follow through on their advantage or to evade the opponents counter blows. Our solution was to infuse a speed bloodline.
 

Opportunity came in 2005, when Jessie Ledesma won the PAGBA stag derby. His last fight was a black bonanza stag that clinched him the championship in spectacular fastest kill fashion. Through the intercession of my friend and cocking buddy Raul Ebeo, who was at the derby, I managed to acquire said champion stag. This stag was then bred to the pullets out of sipsip. The result was satisfactory so I set them as a bloodline. They were the first blakliz. This became the foundation and the composition of the blakliz for some generations. Somewhere along the way I infused the Aguirre grey to the blakliz. This accounted for the dirty grey version of the blakliz I called midnight grey. Recently majority of mating of the blakliz were between midnight grey and the original blend sipsip blakliz. The mating produced the better performers in the 2010 and 2011 stag seasons during which we performed creditably in Rambulan 1, Heritage Cup and Bakbakan.
 

Currently the composition of the blakliz came from the bloods of five exceptional brood cocks—ponkan the original; sipsip; the Bonanza of Ledesma; black vest, the best among the first midnight greys; and a new blue face that came from my ―migo Jason Garces. Out of them evolved three main families of blakliz; the midnight grey (infused with Aguirre grey); the blakliz plus (plus the blue face) and the original blend (the Ledesma-sipsip line). By blending the three lines we got the best of the blakliz battle pure. As a bloodline, the blakliz is still very new. It has not yet passed the ultimate trial, which is the test-of-time. Although lately it has contributed to our humble successes, the blakliz has yet to win a major title on its own. At present, all the blakliz got are an acceptable winning percentage (Almost 70%, whereas our passing grade is 60%) and lots of promise. Indeed enough promise to keep a practical breeder like me to keep on breeding the blakliz. For some years, I kept the bloodline for myself. Now I have gained enough confidence on the blakliz to make them available to friends, clients and buyers.

 

But the blakliz is not for ordinary breeder. It is for those who dare to be different.