Get active against the shooters

At the end of this week, people will start shooting at partridges for nothing more than the pleasure of watching the birds plummet from the sky and die. But the cruelty and commodification of these beautiful birds, doesn’t start on 1 September.

To produce enough partridges – and pheasants – for the wealthy shooting industry, the birds are mass produced on huge factory farms. Breeding birds – the birds who produce the next season’s birds for shooting – are confined, often in dreadful conditions to be used as egg-laying “stock”.

In nature, partridges roam vast areas and select their mate for life, but on game farms, they are “force paired”. Essentially this means that game farmers confine, at random, one female and one male inside either a wooden or metal box. The combination of force-pairing and imprisonment is unbelievably cruel and results in huge levels of stress and unhappiness – to the extent that the game farmers put restrictive ‘bits’ on the birds’ beaks in an effort to prevent the male killing the female.

Their eggs are collected, incubated by machine and hatched – and the chicks are raised to be shot. ‘Substandard’ chicks are ground up alive along with unhatched eggs.

It is fundamentally cruel to use live animals as targets. It is fundamentally cruel to cage birds and take their eggs from them.  We must do all we can to bring an end to this bloodsport.

We are calling on the government to ban the production and killing of birds. Click here to make your voice heard.

You can also order leaflets to distribute or to use on your street stall. Take a look at our available leaflets and send us an email.