Over the past few months we have been publishing analysis of undercover footage obtained on so-called ‘game farms’ across England. We began by looking at the sheer scale of the shooting industry, and how the adult birds (not every bird, but far too many) are sometimes treated. We’ve also looked briefly at how enormous numbers of eggs are collected and washed - and in some cases dumped unlawfully in open-air trailers…what we look at now is the birds visiting those dumped eggs.
Forgive us for a touch of repetition, but - once again - undercover footage obtained by our investigators shows a disturbing scene at a so-called “game farm”. This time we’re back at Cambrian Birds and their open-air trailer crawling with maggots and piled high with discarded pheasant eggs - some containing the remains of unhatched or partially developed chicks.
We can be certain of that last claim, because this is the same site where, as we reported previously, our investigator found a live chick struggling among the wreckage (see Thrown Away Alive).
That earlier discovery was so shocking it prompted the investigator to place a camera nearby as they suspected wild birds and/or foxes and rats would be attracted to the dump and its abundant ‘food source’.
And indeed that was the case. The footage captured by the camera shows a steady stream of wild birds descending on the dump to feed. Magpies, Jackdaws, Ravens, and Carrion Crows all filmed in real-time picking through the pile, pulling out broken eggs and what are clearly the corpses of pheasant chicks.
On several occasions, a Common Buzzard - a protected bird of prey targeted on some shooting estates - was recorded at the site as well, drawn in by the same grim buffet.
An Open Invitation to Disease
The camera was placed on-site for several days. It was pointed at the trailer but also shows a dung heap to its left, just a metre or so away, which corvids in particular appeared to be using as a ‘watch point’ to monitor the dump.
Here is a brief snapshot of the notes we took while going through the footage (each recording lasts 3 minutes). Birds came and went, but in just two hours on one day EIGHT bird species were identified and at least EIGHT individual birds were seen at any one time. It’s entirely possible that as many as twenty individuals in total were observed, and - given the time of year (June) - also possible that these birds were feeding young with this ‘waste’.
02/JUNE/2025
REC000067 Birds in and around trailer – Magpies and Carrion Crows
REC000068 Carrion Crows flying onto and standing on trailer
REC000069 Jackdaw on trailer, Mallard drake and duck on dung heap by trailer
REC000082 Two Ravens (calling at 00:02:06) and a Magpie in trailer on dumped eggs
REC000083 Raven carrying egg in beak flies away. Two Magpies and Jackdaw perched on trailer.
REC000084 Carrion Crow again in traileron dumped eggs
REC000085 Carrion Crow carrying egg in beak flies away from trailer of dumped eggs
REC000086 Raven and two Magpies in trailer on dumped eggs
REC000087 Raven flying away with egg, Jackdaw in trailer on dumped eggs
REC000088 Two Ravens in trailer on dumped eggs. One Raven flies off with egg in beak.
REC000089 Guinea fowl scratching around on dung heap next to trailer. Raven lands and drops onto dumped eggs in trailer. Magpie and Jackdaw on trailer.
REC000090 Five Jackdaws (four on dung heap, one on trailer) in view at same time
REC000091 Raven returns and it, five Jackdaws and two magpies (eight birds) in view at same time. Carrion Crow returns.
REC000097 Two Magpies on dumped eggs in trailer. Raven lands on dung heap.
REC000098 Raven on trailer. Three Magpies on dumped eggs on trailer. Second Raven flies in, first Raven flies off with second bird – calls heard well. Carrion Crow on skip. Common Buzzard appears in trailer on dumped eggs.
REC000099 Common Buzzard in trailer on dumped eggs.
REC000100 Common Buzzard in trailer on dumped eggs.
REC000101 Common Buzzard in trailer on dumped eggs.
REC000102 Common Buzzard in trailer on dumped eggs.
REC000103 Common Buzzard in trailer on dumped eggs. Walks off camera to right. Pied Wagtail on trailer. Blackbird on dung heap.
Animal By-Product Regulations
What’s been recorded here is far more serious than just unpleasant viewing. Eggs and animal tissue of this kind fall under Animal By-Product Regulations, which exist precisely because uncontrolled disposal of this material can spread disease. These rules require that animal by-products, including hatchery waste, be handled, stored and disposed of in ways that prevent contamination and the transmission of pathogens - not left in the open for corvids and birds of prey to pick over.
By allowing wild birds direct access to this material, whatever pathogens may be present in it are no longer contained to a single trailer on a single farm. They are being carried out across the surrounding countryside in the digestive tracts, beaks and feet of every Magpie, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Raven, and Buzzard that visits.
Given the well-documented risks to wild birds of avian influenza and other transmissible diseases in poultry and gamebird populations, this is not a hypothetical concern. It is a plausible route by which disease could move from a commercial pheasant-rearing operation into the wider wild bird population, and potentially back again.
We believe this dump appears to represent a clear breach of the regulations designed to prevent exactly this kind of risk. It’s difficult to believe that the farm operator would be unaware of these regulations. We don’t know, but we can only assume that the owners and the staff assumed that because they were out in the countryside they would never be caught.
Whatever the reason, our footage raises serious questions about how this site - and others like it (investigators are still out there recording more damning footage) - are managing the biological waste that mass pheasant production inevitably generates.
Irony alert
Anyone who follows the destruction wreaked by the shooting industry will recognise a bitter irony in exactly which species are turning up to feed at this dump: Magpies, Jackdaws and Carrion Crows are routinely named by the shooting industry as species that must be "controlled" because they are supposedly too numerous and too great a threat to pheasants, grouse, and other wildlife.
Buzzards, too, despite being a protected bird of prey, are a species we know the industry considers a problem to be managed (see Gamekeeper guilty of clubbing Buzzard to death and Buzzard shot in North York Moors National Park).
Yet here they are, drawn in not because they are running rampant across the countryside unchecked, but because the industry itself has left out a ready supply of food for them.
Recognise a familiar pattern? This is the same industry that by releasing tens of millions of pheasants into the countryside every year artificially inflates the food supply available to foxes, then presents fox "control" as a necessary response to a problem largely of its own making.
We are naming this farm - but…
We have previously identified this so-called ‘game farm’. That was a deliberate choice to support local opposition.
But our investigations have not been limited to a single site. We are still visiting and documenting conditions at numerous other farms breeding birds for the gun, and what we have found clearly points to a pattern rather than an isolated failure.
The shooting industry is in full denial mode already, but we have plenty more evidence to come: we are not going to allow this industry to write off what we’ve uncovered as the actions of one “rotten apple” operator because that simply is not the case.
We will be naming other farms in upcoming articles, but it is important to understand that this is not a story about one farm cutting corners.
It is a story about how the pheasant shooting industry as a whole treats surplus eggs and dead chicks as an afterthought - something to be tipped into a trailer rather than dealt with responsibly, regardless of the risks that poses to disease control and to the wild birds drawn in by the smell of decay.
Video and images recorded by our undercover investigator 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.
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What do DEFRA have to say about this atrocity?
It's so obvious the word would be a better place without bird shooting but sadly the quiet majority are shouted out by the rich and powerful minority.
The same applies to hunting and every other atrocity against nature.