Animal welfare campaigners were locked up in cramped cages outside the Plaid Cymru conference in Llandudno today (October 2) to highlight the suffering pheasants and partridges face in them and to call for an end to their use to breed game birds in Wales.

The campaigners from animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports mimicked the distress game birds face being confined to cages for breeding and called on the Welsh government to outlaw the shooting industry from using them.

Welsh government figures show that between 800,000 and 2.3 million non-native pheasants and partridges are released in the Welsh countryside every year to be shot for sport. These birds are often the result of intensive industrial scale breeding across Wales using raised battery style cages with metal walls and wire mesh roofs and floors.

A severe lack of space and the conditions of their confinement for these semi-wild birds, leads to distress and injuries, including damaged beaks, foot lesions, wounds from stress-induced aggression, and scalping on wire mesh roofs when they attempt to escape.

Jamie Adair, public affairs officer for Wales from the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “Keeping pheasants and partridges in cages for breeding causes these birds an immense amount of suffering and is an animal welfare issue that needs to be addressed by the Welsh Government.

“The Welsh government now has a clear opportunity to demonstrate leadership on animal welfare issues by including game birds in its work on ending the use of cages for farmed animals.”

Game birds such as pheasants and partridges do not enjoy the basic legal protections such as minimum space requirements which are afforded to birds farmed for food such as chickens and turkeys.

Polling conducted by YouGov in 2021 found that 72 per cent of the Welsh public opposed the use of cages to breed pheasants and partridges.

The caged breeding event outside conference coincided with the start of the pheasant shooting season in Wales which began on October 1.

Jamie added: “We highlighted to Plaid Cymru members today the distress that using cages for breeding game birds causes.

“The use of cages for farmed animals needs to end and this ban on using cages in Wales should include the many pheasants and partridges being kept for breeding in appalling conditions.”