Seed for wild birds, sold from rural Shropshire since 1987.

CJ Wildlife began as a bird-food business on a farm in rural Shropshire. Companies House records the company behind it, C J WildBird Foods Limited, as incorporated on 19 February 1987 under the name C.J. (Wild Bird Foods) Limited, which it kept until April 1997. The company’s own pages tell the founding in two ways: its “About us” page says the business was founded in 1987 by the cousins Chris and Ben Whittles, while its page on Shropshire projects names Chris Whittles, whom it describes as a lifelong ornithologist and wildlife enthusiast, as the founder. Both accounts put the start on the same farm.

The company says it began by researching and selling a small range of seeds for wild birds, and that it grew as more people learned about feeding garden birds. It also says it still operates from the farm where it started. The Shropshire Star has described the business as based in Upton Magna, a village near Shrewsbury, in reports published in October 2019 and August 2023.

For its first decades the business traded as CJ WildBird Foods. An archived copy of its website from December 2000 carries that name and says the company produced the RSPB BirdCare range of feeders and bird food for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The same page already reached beyond birds, offering foods and nest boxes for hedgehogs, badgers, bats, squirrels and insects. By January 2006 the site was announcing new associations with the RSPCA and the Royal Horticultural Society, and offering a free handbook of garden wildlife, a monthly newsletter and live webcams. An archived copy from January 2011 describes the ornithologists and wildlife advisers at “CJs” carrying out research projects with wildlife experts.

From CJ WildBird Foods to CJ Wildlife.

The name on the shop changed in the 2010s. Archived copies of the company’s website, birdfood.co.uk, still read “CJ WildBird Foods” in January 2011; by January 2016 the site was titled CJ Wildlife, the name it uses today. The registered company kept the older name, so CJ WildBird Foods and CJ Wildlife are two labels for the same Shropshire business. The shorter name fits a catalogue that now runs from bird food, feeders and nest boxes to insect houses, hedgehog food, plants and gifts.

The company describes what it makes itself. It says it produces its seeds and seed mixes, peanuts, peanut cakes and peanut butters for birds in-house, and that it recently opened a new fat production facility for its suet products. It says many of its wooden products use timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and that its parcels go out in boxes made from recycled material. Not everything is made in Shropshire: the company says its specialist wildlife products are produced in Germany, Poland and Lithuania, with seed mixes and fat products such as suet blocks made in Oberhausen, Germany.

Partnerships sit alongside the CJ Wildlife name. The company says its partnership with the National Trust began in 2020, and that its National Trust Garden Wildlife Range is sold online and at a number of National Trust places, with part of the proceeds going to the charity’s conservation work. On the CJ Wildlife website those products carry the National Trust name in their titles, from peanut cakes for birds to feeders and nest boxes.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make food or feeders for wild birds: Haith’s, Jacobi Jayne, Peckish, Gardman, CJ Wildlife, Droll Yankees and Brome Bird Care. Wild bird care brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger garden or pet groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a garden centre to a hardware store or a mail-order catalogue.

A wild bird care brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a name, a pack and a promise about the birds it is meant for, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its seed or feeders are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packs and marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Shropshire business with a European sister brand.

CJ Wildlife sits within a larger group. The company says its Vivara brand was launched in 2002 and is supported by an infrastructure based in the Netherlands, which lets it reach customers across Europe, including Ireland. The Shropshire Star described the relationship the other way round in August 2023, calling CJ Wildlife part of Vivara. The CJ Wildlife website also sells a range of nest boxes under the Vivara Pro name.

Local ties remain part of how the business presents itself. In October 2019 the Shropshire Star reported that CJ Wildlife had supplied two bird-feeding stations and an insect habitat for the Love2Stay resort in Shrewsbury. In August 2023 the same paper reported that a team of staff planned to climb Snowdon that October to raise money for Severn Hospice and Hillbrae Rescue Kennels; Kirsty Windley, the company’s head of customer service, told the paper that CJ Wildlife’s roots had been in Shropshire for 36 years. The company’s Shropshire page lists local partners including the Shropshire Wildlife Trust.

The name needs a little care online. The business trades at birdfood.co.uk rather than at an address carrying its own name, and searches for “CJ” alone also turn up the South Korean food group CJ CheilJedang, which is unrelated.

For a design guide, CJ Wildlife shows a farm-based seed business that has traded under two names, works alongside a charity partner and shares its catalogue with a European sister brand. Compare Haith’s, the British bird-food firm, and Versele-Laga, the Belgian family feed maker of Deinze. For this guide we use meadow green, seed gold and bark brown with a humanist sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep CJ Wildlife’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.