In 2025, we visited three ‘game bird’ breeding farms in Wales, uncovering deeply troubling welfare violations and regulatory failings. At all three sites, birds were confined, stressed and frequently injured.
Investigating 'game' farms
The shooting industry factory farms around 60 million pheasants and partridges each year, just to shoot them out of the sky for ‘fun’. We’ve conducted close to 20 visits of ‘game bird’ farms and found cruelty and neglect at every single one.
In 2022, our team visited two industrial ‘game’ farms in Wales: Bettws Hall in Powys and Park Farm in Flintshire. Footage revealed rows upon rows of tiny, metal cages used to confine breeding birds.
In 2021, we visited a ‘game bird’ farm in Sussex and found birds confined to barren cages. A complaint to Trading Standards was met with assurance that there were no welfare issues at the farm. Later in 2021, we revisited the farm and discovered severe neglect. A long-running camera revealed that birds were not checked for 48 hours.
Bird traps are used to lure so-called ‘pests’ (usually corvids like crows and magpies) into cages from which they cannot escape. They are then killed. In 2021, we filmed a live ‘decoy’ bird with an injured wing being used to attract others.
In 2020, we found incredibly stressed birds at an unnamed ‘game bird’ farm in Suffolk where cages were entirely barren and without enrichment – a breach of the Code of Practice for the Welfare of Gamebirds Reared for Sporting Purpose.
We captured exclusive footage of hatching and live chicks being tossed into a high-speed grinder known as a ‘macerator’ at Heart of England Game Farm in Warwickshire. At a second farm, Bettws Hall in Wales, trays of eggs were loaded into the macerator without being checked for signs of life.
In 2019, we returned to Bettws Hall in Powys and found four dead female pheasants in different cages, including two dead in one cage. Some of the dead birds appeared to have been cannibalised after death.
Animal Aid investigators found rooks left in cage traps without water or a perch. One bird was injured. We also found a pheasant in a cage trap and a male pheasant shot outside of the permitted season. We reported these breaches to the police.
In 2017, we conducted three visits to this farm and found widespread feather loss, female birds with dressings covering their backs (likely injured during mating), a dead partridge, and cows grazing on a pile of litter that contained dead birds.
In 2015, we filmed pheasants and partridges used by the shooting industry for breeding. Footage showed birds confined for weeks in tiny metal boxes and units so barren they breach official welfare codes.
For investigations dating further back, please visit our news pages.
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Our undercover footage catalogues the suffering and misery endured by birds abused by the shooting industry. Add your name to the petition to ban shooting.