How To Attract Barn Owls (And Keep Your Homestead Rodent-Free)

How To Attract Barn Owls (And Keep Your Homestead Rodent-Free)  http://bit.ly/1QdOBaJ  

Rodents in your fields and gardens can decimate your crop, and their resilience and numbers make them hard to eliminate. Enter your new best friend: an owl. Owls love to eat rodents, mice, rats, voles and sometimes larger animals like moles.

A nesting owl is a killing machine, storing dozens of dead rodents in preparation for incubating the eggs. Barn owls don’t build their own nests, however; they look for sheltered places to roost and nest. Traditionally invited into barns, today’s owls rely on natural crevices and man-made boxes to find a place to hatch and rear young.

Barn owls live in North America year-round. Most will nest in the spring, although some will do so at other times throughout the year, laying an average of six eggs per nest. The female remains on the nest until the eggs hatch, and spends much of the first three months with the owlets. She relies on the male to deliver prey; a brood will eat 60-70 pounds of prey on average in its first three months. That’s a lot of mice that won’t be able to eat your crops.

Where Can You Build a Nesting Box

Barn owls like to roost inside buildings, but it doesn’t matter what type of building or where it is on your property, so long as it isn’t frequently disturbed by human activity. You can also place a box on the exterior of a building or a tree, provided you direct the opening away from the prevailing winds.

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