They Specialize In Barn Owl Houses

They Specialize In Barn Owl Houses BIRD CONTROL Bird Control 33-4-29 There's no doubt how useful barn owls can be when it comes to rodent control. Type "barn owl boxes" into Google and you get more than 400,000 hits. The reason is simple, says John Schuster, of Wild Wing Company. One adult barn owl can eat more than 350 gophers or rats a year. Put up a box for an owl pair to nest and they'll raise an average of three to five owlets. That will require the parents to hunt every night for gophers, voles, rats and mice. Studies indicate 48 pairs of owls raising three owlets each can consume 6.3 tons of rodents in one year. From California vineyard owners trying to control gophers to Middle Eastern date growers concerned about palm rats, barn owl boxes are going up all over the world. Wild Wing Company's favorite design is the Horizontal Barn Owl nesting box with Sun Shields, which is built out of 3/4-in. CDX plywood and is 12 by 16 by 24 in. with a 3 1/2- by 4-in. elliptical doorway "We have elliptic holes specifically designed to give barn owls a sense of security," Schuster says. Wild Wing boxes include a predator guard - a vertical wall inside the box between the hole and where the owls nest to help stop predators from reaching in. Sun Shields are exterior wooden pieces that protect the box from overheating. Location is more important than size. "You want to find flight corridors, which are gaps between trees and buildings," Schuster says. The door should face true east. A tree or other perch 30 to 50 yards southeast of the box offers owls a safe place to land when they leave the box. Boxes can be set up 100 to 200 yards apart. Since owls don't hunt directly near their own boxes, it's good to have at least three boxes to overlap hunting territories within each barn owl's 1 1/2-mile radius. While boxes can be placed on trees, Schuster recommends putting boxes on 16-ft. long 4 by 4-in. posts, or better yet, steel poles to make the boxes more difficult for predators to climb. Boxes can be as low as 8 ft. but 12 ft. is a manageable height for installation and cleaning out the box once a year. Barn owls live year round in most areas except in far north areas with lots of snow. Barn owls use hearing to detect rodents and can hear through 3 ft. of snow. Wild Wing sells a variety of custom-made boxes starting at $82. The Horizontal Barn Owl Nest with Sun Shields sells for $107. They offer discounts for orders of 10 or more boxes. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, John Schuster, Wild Wing Co., 1179 Debbie Hill Road, Cotati, Calif. 94931 (ph 707 795-4440; www.wildwingco.com).

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