After cutting the wire on a game farm in Wiltshire and driving 5,000 pheasants to roost unprotected on the ground, where they are easy prey for foxes, the Animal Liberation Front has done the same for 9,000 birds in Suffolk.
ALF claims it cut the wire at Heath Hatcheries in Suffolk during the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.
In a post on an anti badger-cull page StopTheCull on Facebook, it writes: “A clear path was made so that the birds headed towards the forest and away from the road, grain was put down to attract them in that direction.
“Once inside the farm we went straight to the battery cages which were inside a fenced off area, we could hear partridges but we could also see an expensive sensor based security system, we had to leave these partridges as we did not have the equipment with us to disable the alarm system.
“We surveyed the 45 breeding pens for pheasants, then removed a panel from each one of these pens, herded the pheasants out into the corridor then further on and out of the farm directly into a wooded area, each pen contained around 200 birds, making the total around 9,000.”
ALF reasons that if it frees the birds, shoots will not be able to go ahead. It says: “We will continue to dismantle the shooting industry, fawsarm by farm, shoot by shoot, until the end.”
Heath Hatcheries has been targeted by antis in the past, with articles about it placed by Animal Aid in news media including The Sunday Times.
StopTheCull is backing ALF’s actions and providing an announcement service for the group. In March, it had to remove a post calling for a mass attack on UK game farms, reported here.
