Driven game birds give nation benefits
IN RESPONSE to Frances Weeks' letter Feathered targets' practice is sickening, Letters, September 25, I would like to provide a little background on the practise of driven bird shoots.
Less than five per cent of UK farms use battery egg production as this is incompatible with the standards of welfare and good practice adhered to by the vast majority of the shooting community.
Chicks are released into outdoor pens at the age of two weeks, with plenty of access to grain, water and heated, covered space in which they may shelter as needed.
Six-week-old poults are placed in release pens at an average density of 600 birds per hectare, whereas free-range chickens may be as dense as 1,000 per hectare.
Soon the pens are opened and the birds are free to roam the wooded or arable area as they wish. Food, water and shelter from the elements and predators are still provided.
British gamekeepers are responsible for conserving an area the size of Scotland. Their efforts result in massive increases in biodiversity in everything from butterflies to songbirds, as noted by the RSPB and the Game Conservancy Trust.
Shooting also relieves the pressure to turn Britain's dwindling woodland into arable or pasture land; indeed it encourages the planting of new trees. Furthermore a 2006 survey showed shooting to add around £600 million to the rural economy and support 40,000 jobs.
Grouse shooting contributes 90 per cent of some areas of Scotland's economy, and 23 per cent of guns in Scotland come to Britain for this specific reason.
Shooting supports diversification of otherwise limited areas' economies including farms of all sizes — ever more crucial in these difficult times for smaller farms — as many of the South West's farmers will agree.
Game makes for excellent and healthy food — tasty, lean and the ultimate in free range — inexpensive too, with shoots selling birds for around £1 to £5 each — that certainly has the supermarkets beat!
I think readers will agree the driven game industry is a far less barbaric practice than the average chicken or turkey farm and that it has real benefits to the nation and local areas.
Although I do not shoot driven game I support it for the above reasons. I do not support cruelty.
Matt Saunders
Redvers Road, Exeter
3 Comments
by Thomas Kennedy, W. Sussex
Thursday, October 14 2010, 1:18PM
“I have worked in three game rearing farms over the past five years. Several thousand birds (pheasant and partridge) are reared, the chicks have plastic bits stapled through their beaks, destroying their septum, to try and prevent them pecking other birds to death. The laying adult birds may be reared in factory farm type cages and have blinkers stapled through their beaks to again prevent them from killing their cage mates. Many birds will die from disease and injury (extra birds are reared to take these losses into account). They will live in factory farm like conditions before being taken from the rearing sheds and placed into smaller barns before having their first flight wings cut off, with no aneasthetic, and sent to the shooting estate. Go to the League Against Cruel Sports website to find out the facts of rearing birds to shoot. Thousands of game birds can be released onto a single shooting estate causing road havoc as well as having a dramatic impact on the local environment. Animals dareing to take any of these birds will be killed every year in their thousands. They will be shot, poisoned, attacked with dogs underground, trapped and snared. And all this for what? So people can take entertainment from killing an animal. Many of the birds are not even eaten and so estates have 'dead pits' where they dump there unwanted quarry. On grouse moors, thousands of acres of land is burned to create growth of heather which the grouse feed on (the developing flower buds). This destruction of OUR countryside means that few other animals can live in these grouse areas. On top of this, the killing of preditors such as fox, stoats, weasals and occasionally (illegally) birds of prey, Pine Martens and badgers etc leave the area barren of much life. Simply, the grouse moor becomes nothing, but a playground for those who enjoy killing for pleasure. Those people who do take enjoyment from shooting animals often support their past time by claiming that killing animals is good for conservation. However, look a little closer and understand the true facts and it is actually the case that the shooting industry in the UK has over the years been guilty of truly ruining our green and pleasant land, causing incredible suffering along the way to boot!”
by misterkipling, Exeter
Friday, October 01 2010, 8:03PM
“I had an ex girlfriend that I could describe as a "Driven Game Bird"
She was both motivated and game for anything”
by Paul, Alphington
Friday, October 01 2010, 1:17PM
“What ever way you try to dress it up or compare it to farmed animals it is still a disgusting practice carried out by disgusting inadequate persons.”