Faeces and fighting, the real life of countryside pheasants

We’ve all seen pheasants wandering around the countryside in that bumbling way, haven’t we? It’s endearing the way that they seem a little oblivious, a little bit not-quite-there as they bob through our fields. We treat these birds as a classic symbol of the British countryside, don’t we?

We assume they’ve always been here. But what if I told you nothing could be further from the truth? Pheasants are not a native bird. This is a carefully maintained illusion. And behind that illusion is one of the most disgusting and hidden networks of intensive factory farming in the UK. Behind glossy marketing campaigns of ‘traditional country sports’ lies a multi-million pound agribusiness.

And it poisons our wildlife, terrorises our roads, and inflicts cruelty on millions of sentient birds on a scale we have never heard of.

Industrialised misery

Every single year, this hidden cruelty behind the shooting industry results in the dumping of more than 60m birds into our countryside. We force millions of pheasants and red-legged partridges into the wild. That’s almost one for every man, woman and child in the UK.

It’s not just a few cute country estates doing this. It is a massive, ecological flood. In just the last century alone, the number of captive-bred birds being released into our countryside has exploded by over 600%. Just for rich knobs in tweed to mindlessly shoot them!

To feed this disgusting bloodlust, a network of approximately 300 industrial bird farms operates in Britain. And this is heavily supplemented by breeding farms from overseas. It’s in these farms where the ‘wild’ birds begin their lives and it’s a living hell. Rows of tiny, cramped wire cages hidden across acres of our countryside.

In these tiny cages, pheasants are stripped of every natural instinct they could ever possess. They’re traumatised, chronically bored and packed into tiny living conditions. Because of this, these adorable birds turn on each other. Fights break out as naturally territorial males and stressed as hell hens turn to feather-pecking and cannibalism. They literally tear each other to bits because they cannot escape from the claustrophobic conditions.

Mutilation means damage limitation

Of course, the people who farm these birds don’t ever question the cruelty of the cages as the cause. Instead, they rely on disgusting methods to protect profits. To stop birds from killing each other, they bolt plastic beak guards to their faces.

And the female birds get an even worse treatment. Due to repeat and aggressive mating that they can’t escape, they have protective ‘saddles’ strapped to their back. This conflict tears their skin right open. How is this animal care? They’re nothing but damage limitation designed to increase bird reproduction. Basically, they keep the birds alive long enough to harvest their eggs.

In recent undercover investigations by campaign group End Bird Shooting, investigators saw this first hand. They’ve documented cages that are three stories high. This leaves the birds at the bottom unable to escape a constant shower of shit falling on them.

Incompetence and road chaos

These poor birds are finally boxed up and shipped off to shooting estates, and it’s a disaster. After living in a cage for so long, they have no survival skills. Incubator rearing deprives them of parent birds, ripping away their road sense and leaving them wide open to predators. And that includes humans.

We laugh as they bumble around the country. But this cluelessness is artificial. It’s the result of our neglect, and us putting them through so much early-life trauma.

It’s our incompetence and cruelty that leads to between 2.4m and 3.5m pheasants being killed on UK roads. Every. Single. Year. That’s about 7% of this artificial population. They’re the number-one roadkill victim in the UK. And this road chaos doesn’t just affect these poor birds.

Collisions with these heavy 1.5kg birds can be deadly for humans too. Pheasants can easily smash windscreens and buckle bumpers. When people naturally try to swerve to avoid them, it turns deadly. There’s around 65 collisions recorded with these birds every year. Around 6% of these result in serious death or injury. All so some rich dude with a gun can get his rocks off murdering an defenceless animal.

To make things worse, the birds are being shot with lead ammunition. A study led by the University of Cambridge revealed a shocking 99% of pheasants sold for meat contain toxic lead fragments. And it’s not just us who consumes it. It is also local scavengers and wildlife.

We need to rip off the mask

This destructive system operates in a regulatory dead zone. Because the shooting industry pretends to be a rural heritage, it slips through the cracks. It evades the strict oversight applied to every other form of intensive animal agriculture.

It’s a system that cannot be reformed. It has to be dismantled and now. We can no longer let rich people pay for the privilege of killing these stunning birds any longer. The dedicated team at End Bird Shooting is working tirelessly to expose this cruelty and they’re calling out for support.

These animals are counting on us to break the silence. Right now, millions of birds are stuck in this hell and it’s up to us to help to save them.

Featured image via Shutterstock