These five nestling Common Barn Owls were admitted last Sunday (6/25) from the Fort Morgan, CO area. They were found at the bottom of a grain bin that was being cleaned out for the upcoming wheat harvest in eastern Colorado. Normally we attempt to get a surrogate nest box put up to accommodate moving the kids to a safer location nearby, but they were already in transit to us by the time we received notification of transport.
On arrival to our facility our triage team found these young owls to be a little dehydrated, but in otherwise excellent shape. Mom and dad Barn owl were doing an excellent job of caring for these feisty and very loud kids.
Over the next several weeks they will consume between 3 and 5 ounces of nutritious mice per bird every single day while they grow in all of their flight feathers, get stronger and work on their flight skills. Then they will be live prey tested (mouse school) over a period of 5 days and consume approximately 75 mice over those 5 days. Once live prey tested and fully flight conditioned these young predators will take flight back in the wild and take on their role as a very efficient rodent control team.
Yesterday (6/26) we received another call about six young Barn owls that were found in a Combine that was being prepared for the upcoming wheat harvest. Luckily we were able to communicate with people in the field on how to put up a nest box and safely move those kids out of harm’s way to where mom and dad could still care for them……..WHEW! MT
PS…..Yes. There are 5 Barn owls in the video. One of them is just very shy IMG_3848