User:Anonymouswisebird/Barn owl

Rodent Consumption
Barn owls are the most widespread land bird species in the world, and can be found on every continent except Antarctica. Barn owls have a wide range of diet but in North America and Europe, voles and shrews make up the majority of their diet. Barn owls may also consume birds, lizards, insects, amphibians, and other rodents. Barn owls also have a high metabolism for their size, and typically require one or more voles per night to sustain them. This makes the barn owl one of the top consumers of rodents in the world. It is estimated that a family of five barn owls will consume around 1000 rodents in a single season.

Use on Farms
Because of their large rodent requirements, barn owls make very effective pest control for farmers. Barn owls consume thousands of rodents every year and there can be multiple families of barn owls on a single farm or property. A farmer can install a barn owl nest box for every 10 to 20 acres of land and can be placed as close as 100 feet apart from each other. Barn owls can also be established on many different types of farms, like vineyards, rice fields, fruit orchards, and nut crops. This is because barn owls are found in many different habitats across the world, as long as there is a stable source of prey. Barn owls are extremely effective at controlling rodent populations, and can be a more environmentally friendly option at controlling pests than rodenticides. Rodenticides can travel up the food chain and kill predators like raptors, foxes, and coyotes. Barn owls can remove the use of rodenticides, traps, and chemicals by lowering the population of rodents naturally. Barn owls can be attracted to a farmers field by setting up and maintaining nest boxes. Barn owls also come back to the same breeding sites every year, have multiple young, live in their nest year-round and typically live in concentrated groups, making barn owl pest control self-sustaining.

Cost Effectiveness
Barn owls as pest control are also cost effective for farmers. In a two year study using barn owls as pest control it calculated that the average cost of taking a single rodent was 26 cents compared to 8 dollars and 11 cents to trap each rodent. This estimate did not include the savings the farmers would be making from a lower number of damage to equipment from rodent holes, crop damage, and reduced holes in irrigation systems and other equipment. The same study found that the average cost of applying strychnine poison to kill rodents was 1,400 dollars per year, and that it would cost more for farmers in the long term to use strychnine poison than to install barn owls on property. The initial cost to install barn owls on the farmers property was 6,025 dollars, which means that over 10 years, strychnine poison would be about double the expenses as hosting barn owls on property. Barn owl boxes require regular maintenance that includes cleaning once a year, annual structural inspections, and replacing mulch inside the boxes. Barn owl boxes do not need to be placed higher than 8 feet off the ground, making them easy to access and maintain. Farmers may also be able to make some cash selling the barn owl pellets to schools for the students to dissect them.