Even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and then...

Hey ya’ll,

I swore I wasn’t going to blog again until I had some good news…whew.

Two successful releases last weekend, both Barred owls, one all the way down in Juliet (near Forsyth) and the other one was supposed to go down to Dunwoody this week but he got to feeling better all of a sudden and wanted out NOW, so I just opened the chamber door and there he went. I heard hooting that night, but can’t say if it was him… Both were car crashes, of course. What else is new? If they are adults, they really need to go back to where they came from because they have a territory and a honey waiting. However, sometimes you reach the point of diminishing returns and have to make the executive decision to cut them loose or risk them hurting themselves…

“Pam” on arrival - took a pretty good bonk to the head. Blood in the right eye.


These one handed shots aren’t easy to take, so you just better be quick about it. No pussy-footing around! I was transitioning her from the inside to an outdoor chamber and snapped this head shot. Aren’t they pretty?


You think she’s ready? Don’t worry; the wire is safe as long as they aren’t too nuts… You can see that her plumage is in perfect shape. She was very calm as long as I didn’t open the door, so she bunked down at the very end of “Owl Blvd.” so she couldn’t see me walking around and I fed her through a food chute. This was the day I caught her up for the ride home. She was not a happy camper. Not yet, anyway…

‘Mansell’ just got his bell rang and recovered quickly. This is the one that I released here rather than returning to his area. When they start going nuts, I become concerned with them destroying their plumage. This is why some non-releasable birds don’t made good education birds and eventually have to be put down. Some just don’t adjust to a life in captivity and lose their minds, the poor dears.


Hoo’s yer daddy?! It’s NOT the Christmas Turkey… They get all poofed up like this when they’re defensive.




This here’s Wynona, a rust-neck Wyandotte – ‘Take a look around, see which way the wind blow…Bak-Bak!’


Can’t believe her eyes! This is either Buffy or Barbi Orpington. I can’t tell them apart yet.


Chubby Checker the Dominecker – VERY vocal. This chicken has a lot to say.


Instead of going through the woods to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving, I was out replacing a roof on one of my chambers. It’s slow going when you’re working alone, but I just putter along a little at a time and all I have to do now is install a platform in the front, scrape out the pea gravel and replace with sand. (would anyone like to donate a dumptruck full of sand?)

I use a two roof system so if a wild bird lands on the roof, the captive bird can’t come into contact with it. It’s a territory thing and when the captive birds hoot, the resident birds comes in to give the usurper what for. This is the top layer. It consists of 2 pieces of 4x8’s framed together and covered with welded wire with screen on top. I build these on the ground and just slide them into place. Man, I was sore in places I didn’t know existed for crawling around on the ground for two afternoons in a row. Thank God for Naproxen!

Here is the first framed piece on the left…nothing on the right side yet.


Both top pieces installed – beautiful day, no?


Coming along! The lower part are pressure treated 1x2’s screwed into PT 2x2’s


Ta-da…!


Oh, and Richard the Great Horned owl that someone shot is coming along well. I will start doing physical therapy on him soon and hopefully he will be able to be released. His wing still hangs some and that bothers me, but we’ll see. He will go in the above chamber in a week or so, with some handicap ramps to help him get around at first. Right now he’s still in the tree house to restrict his movement. The large bone in his forearm was broken and the small one helps stablize it while it heals, so we rarely intervene surgically unless they are open fractures.


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Thanks for taking the time to read my blog....m.

Monteen McCord
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POB 130
Holly Springs, GA 30142
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