As blood, dust and feathers fly around a bar outside Banja Luka, some 60 spectators are fixated by the brutal spectacle of cock fighting.
"The cocks are not supposed to fight until death, but sometimes it happens that one has such a strong kick that it breaks its opponent's neck," said Milorad, a breeder of Shamo cocks from Japan.
"Sometimes the owner kills his defeated bird if he feels that it has dishonored him in front of other cock-breeders."
The illegal cockfights in Banja Luka, the Serb-run part of Bosnia, attract fans and breeders from all over the country as well as Serbia and Germany.
"This is a safe haven for us," said a German breeder in a black T-shirt with a picture of two Shamo type cocks, one of which is dead, and a Latin saying: Veni, Vidi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered).
He said he had brought nine cocks to fight in Banja Luka, one of many stops on an international circuit for an ancient "sport" which is universally condemned by animal rights activists and banned in much of the world.
Nobody cares
But while cockfighting has been relegated to the backstreets and remote rural villages in most countries, in war-town Bosnia nobody seems to care.
"We never had any problems with police," said Salko, a Muslim in his 40s who came from the central Bosnian town of Zenica.
"In Bosnia you can get away with murder so why would police bother with the fate of cocks?"
Bosnia is still a legal and judicial grey zone after the 1992 to 1995 war, which pitted the country's Croats, Muslims and Serbs against each other and claimed some 200,000 lives.
Just before the fight starts the breeders agree on betting rules. Several thousand euros often exchange hands in a country where the average annual income is some 2,000 euros (US$2,300).
Once the bets are made the two birds face off in the center of a ring encircled with barbed wire and start to peck each other, opening wounds that soon start bleeding.
The cockfighting fans range from city people to peasants, including a dozen women. Five men have brought their sons, aged between seven and 10, and push them into the first rows to have a better view.
"He's not afraid to watch the cockfighting. Actually he loves it," said one father of his son.
The fighting cocks in Bosnia do not wear blades or gaffs on their claws as elsewhere, but even so they cause such damage that it can take weeks to recover from a fight.
The brawl ends when one cock shrieks or faints, or when an owner steps in to prevent his bird being too badly mauled.
One woman, Ljubinka, said she had come to see her son's birds fighting.
"He loves this sport so much. Even as a small child he would make animals fight," she said.
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