Owl Facts Owl Forum Rescue Keeping Breeding Buying Hunting Owls

The first items of equipment you will need for your owl include :

A falconry glove.
Tweezers - to feed your baby owl with.
A warm safe box - just a bit bigger than the owl when its young.
Plenty of newspaper - to line the box with, owls are messy smelly creatures
Accurate Scales - Preferably digital, get used to weighing your owl daily.
Food - Docs ( Day old chicks ) are great.
Mincer - Depending on the age of your owl, you may have to mince the docs and blending is oh so messy.
Bird or prey or exotic birds / parrot vet - find the vet before you need to use one
Vitamins - seek bird of prey vets advice as to type and dosage.

Tips:
Young owls will not generally eat a whole doc, cut it into small, manageable pieces.
Newspaper NOT sawdust - sawdust will clog in your owls stomach and kill your owl.
Pigeon, pheasant and rich red meat may be too rich for your baby owl, which can cause gut rot and can kill your owl. Wait a couple of months or feed tiny amounts infrequently.
Rabbit should be used with other food whilst your owl is growing as it does not put weight on.
Avian vets are not the always qualified to deal with owls and other raptors, always use a vet trained in preferably raptors but parrots / exotic birds will do.

Feel free to add items I have missed, when this topic is complete I will make it a sticky.

Food ------ more than just DOC, Jester got mice, quail and rabbit (he only ate rat if he was really hungry and i wasnt too keen on skinning and gutting them either when he was to young to eat them himself) Smaller owls that dont eat rabbit wont necessarily need rabbit though

separate freezer for food ( unless you have a very understanding household that dont mind having bird food in the freezer )

an aviary might not be quite essential in the early days but wouldnt hurt to be ready in plenty time to save a rush job of building it when the time comes.

if you intend hunting then a dummy (relevant to the owl type) is handy to start training as soon as they are capable of running towards it and jumping on it which also helps to get them used to the tradeoff from as young an age as possible.

will maybe add more when i remember

Good advise, totally agree