The Importance of Owls to Ranchers & Farmers

Owls are different from all other birds of prey. They are mostly nocturnal and have a highly developed sense of hearing and large eyes to aid their night vision. Their facial feathers are shaped to funnel sound directly to their ears, and their wing feathers have special serrations on them to make their flight silent. Owls feed on rodents and are extremely efficient at keeping rodent numbers down, which is beneficial to farmers.

  1. Barn Owls

    • Barn owls are becoming increasingly common for rodent control on farms. They are more efficient hunters than cats and more effective than traps, and poison is not an option for organic and green farming operations. Barn owls do not build a nest, a fact that has made it easy for farmers to attract them to certain areas. The farmers build barn owl nesting boxes and install them close to the fields where they want the owls to hunt. Wine farmers in California have found them to be particularly useful in controlling rats and gophers.

    Burrowing Owls

    • Farmers and ranchers in the semidesert shrubland of Colorado and neighboring states consider prairie dogs a major pest. Prairie dogs make networks of burrows and holes in the ground that are dangerous for cattle and horses when they step in them. They also damage crops by eating the roots, and they chew plastic irrigation systems. The burrowing owl is the major predator of the prairie dog in these areas, and farmers welcome them. The burrowing owls kill the prairie dogs and take up residence in their burrows. They also help control other rodents. Sadly, burrowing owls often eat poisoned rodents and succumb to the poison themselves.

    Great Horned Owls

    • Great horned owls are the largest nocturnal birds of prey in North America. They are widely distributed throughout the U.S. and live in any habitat, including forests, grassland and deserts, and any climate, hot or cold. Crop farmers like to have them around because they eat larger rodents and pests, including rabbits, hares, squirrels, muskrats, snakes and even skunks, as well as small rodents such as rats and mice. Poultry farmers do not consider them an asset because they are large enough to kill chickens and young turkeys.

    The Spotted Owl

    • The spotted owl in the Northwestern U.S. is seen as the tree farmer's foe. For many years, certain spotted owl species were considered endangered and therefore declared protected, thus preventing logging from occurring anywhere in their habitat. When the law was challenged in 2002, it was found that they were no longer endangered, although still threatened. Laws were put into place for tree farmers to create habitats for spotted owls in exchange for being allowed to pursue their logging operations.