Counting the cost of the feed freeloaders

Wheat is currently trading at a little more than £200 a tonne ex-farm — and costing up to £20 a tonne more if you are having to get it delivered or are going through a middle man. This compares with an average of around £150 a tonne last year and somewhere in the region of £135 a tonne the year before.

Shoot budgets are going to feel the difference, regardless of size. I am sure none of us begrudges our smaller farmland and woodland birds their share of the wheat, but having it eaten by deer and badgers, smaller mammals such as rats