Police arrested nine people and confiscated nearly 100 chickens in a cockfight bust in a central Ogden neighborhood Saturday.

The Humane Society of Utah believes illegal cockfights happen all over the state nearly every weekend.

Officers, responding to an anonymous tip Saturday night, discovered a cockfight in progress at a home on the 200 block of Patterson Street, Ogden Police Lt. Scott Sangberg said. Several cars were parked in front of the home and police said one of the men was walking out of the back yard as officers arrived.

"He turned around and yelled something in Spanish," Sangberg said. "Then everyone started walking quickly toward the back of the property." Behind a 6-foot-tall fence, police said, they found the cockfight in the back yard. Fresh blood was on the ground. A rooster was already dead from a recent fight, police said.

"They were just drinking beer and watching the chickens fight," Sangberg said one of the men told officers.

Police seized vitamins, syringes and leg razors, which are strapped to the legs of the roosters for the fights.

Nine people were booked into the Weber County Jail on various charges, including investigation of cruelty to animals, tampering with evidence and fraud.

"It was very well concealed," Ogden Animal Services Manager Bob Geier said of the cockfight ring Monday. "The fences all around it, the house was kind of segregated from the other houses."

Animal-control officers seized about 100 chickens that Geier said were being bred at the home. Investigators said the men were betting on the cockfights and one of the men had about $5,000 on him.

Ogden police and animal-control officers said it is the first such bust in city limits in recent years. In 2002, Weber County sheriff's deputies busted up a cockfight in West Haven, arresting three. In January, 19 people were arrested in a cockfight bust in Lindon. The Humane Society of Utah believes cockfighting happens almost every weekend throughout the state.

"Some have had bleachers, snack bars and side pits," said John Paul Fox, chief investigator for the Humane Society of Utah. "Or it can be a few guys getting together in a back yard."

Efforts to boost the criminal penalty for certain animal-cruelty cases — such as cockfighting — have failed in Utah.

Rep. Scott Wyatt, R-Logan, ran legislation in 2005 and again this year seeking to elevate cockfighting to aggravated cruelty of an animal, which would make it a third-degree felony.