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They buy the chicks from places that incubate the eggs .
Then the chicks are put into rearing pens which are usually wooded copses in the corners of fields.These are heavily netted and protected from foxes with electric surrounds .
These pens are large and the birds learn to fly and  at 6 to 8 weeks old, poults are fully feathered, strong and capable of short flights. They also learn to roost in the trees which gives them some protection from foxes .
 Releasing them in July gives the young birds roughly 10 to 12 weeks to get used to the wild  build survival instincts, and reach full adult size before shooting starts in  October
They are still being fed supplementary food from hoppers
If they didn t become ' wild' there would be no sport they would be just like chickens .
Of course the foxes must get many of them at this time .
But so many are released
I took some pictures yesterday but at this age the poults are brown and don't show up very well the males only get their spectacular colouring when they are fully mature .
Here we have black ones too .
Sometimes a peasant is born white .
Shooters have to pay a fine of they shoot a white peasant .
Naturally as an animal lover I am against killing for sport but then I eat chicken and the poor chickens have a much sadder life .
The pheasants at least have a chance of life some do survive against all the odds .
Some get used to coming to gardens for bird feeders where they are at least safe .


Just read up on this and learned that a staggering nearly 30 Million game birds are bred and released every year in the U.K.
Shooting is horrendously expensive and thus is a seriously lucrative bussiness.

I wonder if they breed them in bulk near you and sell them on to others for rearing. I can't see that they would be deliberately released. They'd be released shortly before the shoot and those won't start for months yet.

Wordle 1,864 4/6

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Wordle 1,864 6/6

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Sadly the birds and they are still very young looked to me trustingly as if I was going to feed them .

(Klondike a rabbit crossed the road among them at just the same time ) 

That must have been a joy to see, Muddy.

I haven't seen any here for years,  apart from the poor road kill ones.

Quote from: muddy on Yesterday at 10:03:22 PMJust driving back home at about 19.00 and there were some 30 poults on the road ( a country road ) I had to get out and try to chase them off poor things while my husband drove the car very slowly they just didn't know where to go .
I felt like the man who used to walk in front of cars with a red flag .

Well done, Muddy.    But this  is exactly what I meant back in post 13.

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I would imagine those birds that have never never been out of a pen in their life,  so couldn't possibly know anything  about cars and traffic, never having  seen them.