30 May Great Grey Owl Chicks Hatched!

We are delighted to say that we have successfully hatched our first two Great Grey Owl (strix nebulosa) eggs for this year.

Great Grey Owls can be notoriously difficult to keep alive as chicks until they hit a ‘safe’ age at about 6 weeks old. So far, these two are demonstrating robust good health with superb appetites, and strong voices alerting us to that appetite!

Like their wild counterparts, they are being raised on a diet of virtually exclusively rodents (these two have had nothing but mice so far).

If they both make it, one of these will stay with us, and the other will go to a new owner.

The one we keep will be flown for our guests on experience days, in flying demonstrations, and even deliver rings in wedding ceremonies!

We also have plans to use it to demonstrate the one thing that all owls have, spectacularly sensitive, and location pinpointing hearing – which great grey owls seem to taken to a greater extreme than all others.

Watch this space for news of how the chicks develop, and how the one we keep develops during training.