Sometimes it is necessary to hand-raise if we are to have a happy and well adjusted show bird. One of our raptor team, Tanja, tells us all about hand-raising barn owl Milo.

"When I first met Milo, it was fair to say she had a face only a mother could love! She looks very different now. She is actually 4 years old, but I’ve known her since she was just 2 weeks old when she and her brother Smudgee were first brought to Lone Pine from another zoo to be hand- raised. You might be wondering why we would want to hand-raise them. We wanted to have these owls to be comfortable / happy around people so that our visitors could have the opportunity to get up close and personal with them, and to have them as part of our free-flight bird of prey show.

In order for that to happen it is really important that they are socialised with people from quite a young age, so this means they had to go home with a keeper and be part of their family.  Milo liked to join in with everything we did, like watching TV, but she didn’t always understand that we needed to sleep at night, particularly when she was all geared up to play.

It also became apparent very quickly that Milo had a strong personality of her own. For instance, she liked to sleep in her nest box on her side with her long legs stretched out and with her head propped up on something like we do with a pillow. Not the usual position for a chick in the nest! She was, and still is, very playful, pouncing on anything that moves or looks interesting, including people’s feet or even Christmas decorations. Once, she took all of the decorations off our Christmas tree.

Of course, if she was a wild bird that would all be good practice for catching her prey, which would mainly be mice. In fact, they are fantastic mouse catchers and those long legs of hers would be especially useful for catching mice in long grass or in snow. Luckily Milo doesn’t have to worry about having to catch her own food, so instead, she pounces on and collects small rocks from the ground and puts them in her nest box. Perhaps she’s pretending they are mice and she wants to impress me with her hunting skills.

Feeding a baby barn owl is interesting too, because of course they don’t eat fruit and vegies - they are carnivores. It isn’t enough to feed them chopped up pieces of meat or mince, as they wouldn’t get all the nutrients that they need. It is important to feed them whole food that is as close to their natural diet as possible. They require all of their prey, including the fur, bones and organs, for them to be healthy.

When they are small it means that mice have to be chopped up into bite-size pieces. This can be very messy and a bit gruesome for other members of the the family who aren’t used to it, and can be quite disturbing for visitors who accidentally pull out a packet of frozen mice from the freezer where the ice cubes are usually kept!

Of course, there came the day when Milo discovered she had wings. Birds have to learn to fly just like we have to learn to walk, and this process does not always come naturally. I still have scratches in my floorboards where Milo used my nice wooden floors as a runway to learn how to take off and land. After a weekend of fishing her out from behind cabinets from inside fish tanks, we decided it was time for Milo to return to Lone Pine with her brother Smudgee. She is now a part of our free flight team, and shows people from all around the world the grace and beauty of this wonderful species".