The chicks have been penned at the 1,200-acre estate on the Wiltshire-Dorset border that the singer shares with her husband Guy Ritchie, the film director.
According to estate sources, the 1,000 birds are being allowed to mature alongside 31,000 other chicks brought in from Wales in time for the guns to arrive on October 1.
City bankers and brokers pay up to £10,000 a day to shoot on Madonna’s Ashcombe House estate, now regarded as one of the top 10 game sites in the country.
The couple’s friends, including Brad Pitt and Vinnie Jones, the former footballer turned actor who taught Madonna how to shoot, are also frequent guests.
This is not the first occasion when Madonna, 48, has upset people over her country pursuits. Three years ago she won a successful legal battle to stop ramblers wandering near her £9m home as part of the Right to Roam legislation.
Advertisement
This time she has animal rights groups threatening to beat a path to her door over her decision to import pheasant chicks.
Both Madonna and Ritchie have given up shooting but will still open up their estate for the sport next month.
The chicks cost as little as 70p each to buy from producers in France and cross the Channel on ferries. Animal welfare groups claim that they are hatched in a battery farm environment and raised in miserable conditions merely to be shot.
Andrew Tyler, director of Animal Aid, said: “Shame on Madonna. She thinks that when she puts on her plus fours she is part of the landed gentry.
“But this is not in harmony with nature. It is the production of factory birds to provide a live shooting gallery.”
Advertisement
Barry Hugill, of the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “We know Madonna previously bought in chicks from a battery farm in mid-Wales.
“Some shooting estates put down snares to trap foxes and other predators. We know Madonna does not do this, but that may be because she massively overstocks by importing chicks.”
Some 35m pheasants are raised and released for shooting in Britain each year.
A spokeswoman for Madonna said: “Both Madonna and Guy have stopped shooting. We can confirm that the estate got 1,000 birds from France as an experiment this year but we won’t be doing it again.”
Additional reporting: Olivia Cole