FROM PROTECT THE WILD - FACTORY BRED GAME BIRDS - IS A GAME OF FUN FOR THE SHOOTERS

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more The Reality Behind Britain’s Shooting Estates PROTECT THE WILD MAY 17 READ IN APP There is a deep cynicism at the heart of the shooting industry. The same estates that advertise days in pursuit of wild, free-flying birds - charging their clients thousands of pounds for the privilege - often source those birds from breeding stock that have spent months in cages. Pheasants and partridges used for egg production spend a large part of their adult lives held in what are known as ‘raised laying units’: raised cages. They spend months suspended above the earth in wire mesh cages, never making contact with soil, leaf litter, grass or anything that might connect them to the natural world they are being sold as representing. This is a business decision. Cramming as many birds into as little space as possible. And the birds pay for it with their physical and mental health every single day. Become a Game Changer A pheasant is not a domesticated animal. Thousands of years of selective breeding have not dulled a pheasant’s instincts or reshaped a pheasant’s needs. These are birds that have evolved to forage. To scratch at the earth, turn over leaves, and investigate their surroundings. A pheasant makes hundreds of small decisions every day about where to go, what to eat and how to interact with other birds. These are not optional extras in a pheasant’s life - they are the behaviours that define them. Remove them, and you do not have a pheasant living a reduced life. You have an animal in a state of chronic deprivation. And that is precisely what the raised cage does. It removes everything. The wire mesh floor means the birds cannot scratch, cannot dustbathe, cannot forage. The cage dimensions mean they cannot move freely, cannot escape conflict with other birds, cannot make any meaningful choice about how to spend their time. In their glossy video Heart of England talk about how they have ‘enriched’ the birds’ environment. Enrichment is apparently a piece of wood. There is no complexity. There is just feed, water, and wire. And a bit of timber. Here’s a screenshot from the Heart of England Farms promotional video. But this is only part of the story. These birds, non-native Red-legged or French Partridges, will spend months in the cages before being boxed up, trucked to a shooting estate, and put in front of the guns… This is sensory and behavioural poverty on an industrial scale, imposed on creatures that are, by the shooting industry’s own proud description, wild. The consequences of caging are not theoretical. They are visible, documented and deeply disturbing. Crowded, unstimulated birds under chronic stress do what stressed, bored animals do: they turn on each other. Feather pecking, aggression and injurious behaviour are endemic in these systems. The industry’s response to this suffering has not been to question whether the cages themselves are the problem. Instead, it has reached for a technological fix. Beak guards — plastic devices attached to a bird’s face to prevent it from inflicting wounds — are routinely fitted to pheasants and partridges in cage systems like these. Saddles are strapped to the backs of hens to protect them from the damage caused by repeated, stressed mating in confined spaces. We will be examining these practices in detail in the coming weeks, because they deserve far more scrutiny than they have ever received. What they represent is not about animal welfare or animal care. They are damage limitation tools applied to animals that should never have been put in these conditions in the first place. None of this can be fixed with a welfare code. None of it can be addressed through voluntary guidelines or industry pledges to do better. The raised cage is not a flawed version of an acceptable system — it is the definition of a system that should not exist. Become a Game Changer Shooting’s fantasy world The shooting industry has spent decades hiding this reality behind images of rolling countryside and talk of conservation and stewardship. It has sold a fantasy of wildness while operating an infrastructure of confinement that would generate public outrage if it were applied to any other species. That outrage is overdue. This industry does not need reform. It needs to be held to account for what it actually is — and what it has been allowed to be, in plain sight, for far too long. At Heart of England Farms in Warwickshire, our undercover investigator found something even more shocking: colony cages — cages arranged in long rows and stacked three levels high, housing birds at every tier. The inevitable consequence of this arrangement is as straightforward as it is appalling: the birds on the upper levels defecate onto the birds confined directly below them. There is nowhere to move. There is no escape. The birds on the lower tiers simply endure it. The noise in the shed where these cages are housed is overwhelming. But Heart of England has tried to promote these hellish cages as an improvement, a step forward. The level of suffering they are attempting to whitewash has to be seen to be believed. In our upcoming Substack posts, we will be taking a detailed look at these colony cage systems. It is not easy to look at, but PLEASE don’t turn away. The birds are counting on us. All images are screenshots recorded by our undercover investigator at Heart of England. All of these cages were in use at the time of filming in 2025. We are working to END BIRD SHOOTING. This suffering has to stop. Please share this article. Share our socials. Follow us for updates. End Bird Shooting Over the coming months our campaign will look at the shooting industry at every level. We will highlight the suppliers — the farms, hatcheries, importers and breeders producing tens of millions of birds under conditions that would provoke public outcry if applied to any other animal. We will expose the providers — the estates and syndicates that take those factory-farmed birds and sell the experience of killing them as leisure. And we will look at the clients — the paying guns who are fully aware of the wildlife crime, the trapping of native predators, and the mass suffering involved, and who have decided that none of it is reason enough to stay away. This industry survives because suppliers supply, providers provide, and clients pay. We intend to examine them all. We are working to END BIRD SHOOTING. This suffering has to stop. Please share this article. Share our socials. Follow us for updates. We are at the beginning of something. Months of undercover work. Hundreds of hours of footage. Farms across the UK exposed. And we are only just getting started. But investigations alone do not end industries. People do. We are asking you to become a Game Changer. To stand with us as we take this fight forward, week by week, piece by piece, until the public, the media and the politicians can no longer look away. The first 500 people to sign up will receive a limited edition pin badge. This is the beginning. Be part of it. Become a Game Changer SHARE LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2026 Protect the Wild Protect the Wild, 71-75 Shelton Street Covent Garden, London, W2CH 9JQ Unsubscribe Start writing