Buying Barf: How Owl Pellets Became a Classroom Hit and Thriving Industry

Three or 4 occasions a 12 months, Chris Anderson takes off on a multi-day street journey across the Western United States. He drives from sunup to sunset to scour farms, vineyards, and forests for the tiny, treasured product that’s been the staple of his enterprise for practically three many years: owl pellets.

Anderson is the proprietor and founding father of Owl Model Discovery Kits, a Washington-based science provide and schooling firm that carries owl-themed—and produced—merchandise. Its hottest gadgets are packs of the fuzzy grey pellets that the birds upchuck every day. Dissecting these regurgitated balls, which include a treasure trove of bones, fur, enamel and the rest that owls can’t digest, presents a quintessential wildlife biology lesson for younger college students across the nation. And although at the moment clients should buy pellets on Amazon and Walmart, it’s on-the-ground scouts and suppliers like Anderson who energy this area of interest trade. 

Audubon spoke with Anderson and others within the owl pellet scene to study extra about how and why these instructional items of puke get from the hen to the classroom.

The Finest Pellets 

Sometimes one to 3 inches lengthy and simply mistaken for poop, pellets are the pure final step of an owl’s elaborate digestion course of. Owls incessantly swallow their meals entire, after which two abdomen chambers course of their prey. The meal—normally a vole, mouse, or different small rodent—first travels into the proventriculus to be softened by acid and mucus. Subsequent, it passes by the gizzard the place the squishy elements, comparable to organs, muscle groups, and pores and skin, are damaged down, whereas the more durable, indigestible materials will get compressed right into a pellet. The mush continues into the small gut, however the pellet returns to the proventriculus for six to 10 hours till the hen finishes digesting and eventually regurgitates it. Owls sometimes type and expel one to 2 pellets per day.

All owls produce pellets, however American Barn Owls are the go-to supply for many collectors due to their predictable, accessible roosting websites. Because the identify hints, the birds wish to settle in barns or different massive, comparatively low-traffic buildings and usually depart pellets close by. They’re additionally reliably interested in nest packing containers, making their drop websites even simpler to search out. 

Barn Owl pellets are additionally prime dissection materials due to their sturdiness and uniformity, Anderson says. “Barn Owl pellets are stiff capsules coated in enzymes which have a type of lacquered look to them,” he says. “Whereas a pellet that comes from a Nice Horned Owl, as an example, form of seems like an ice cream cone. It’s very grey, porous, and brittle, and stuffed with damaged, powdery bones.” Nice Horned Owls are likely to prey on bigger mammals like skunks and rabbits and snap their bones earlier than ingesting them. This makes it onerous for dissectors to establish what’s inside their pellets, however Anderson nonetheless sells them for anybody who’s up for a problem. 

Roost to Retail 

Since its founding in 1996, Owl Model Discovery Kits has offered greater than 10 million Barn Owl pellets. The corporate collects pellets from throughout 13 western states, typically by visiting Barn Owl nest packing containers it has put in on personal properties. Anderson has longstanding relationships with landowners who okay the pellet hunts—a lot of whom he now considers shut buddies. On a street journey, he usually sticks to the identical routes. However he additionally should keep up-to-date on any climate patterns or new agricultural practices and insurance policies which may have an effect on the place owls stay, hunt—and throw up. 

Flood irrigation, for instance, is an energy-efficient watering approach that depends on gravity to saturate swaths of land. However the course of drowns out voles and different burrowing mammals that Barn Owls feast upon. So, when some farmers in Colorado just lately adopted the observe, owl pellets turned scarce in areas as soon as wealthy with them—and Anderson needed to reroute. “Generally even well-intended farming practices can have a cascading impact on wildlife,” he says. “When confronted with the absence of owls in an space, I at all times ask questions on how environmental modifications may’ve influenced it.”

After he returns dwelling with full baggage of pellets, Anderson and his pellet-processing crew (two part-time warehouse workers) get to work getting ready the products for distribution. They individually wrap the pellets in aluminum foil and bake them in an oven for 90 minutes to kill off micro organism. The barf balls are additionally well-liked nesting websites for bugs, so heat-sterilizing them ensures that any eggs or larvae hidden inside are destroyed. As soon as the pellets come to room temperature, the group packages and ships them off to clients.

In 2024, the crew processed between 35,000 and 45,000 Barn Owl pellets every month. Anderson used to gather the entire stock on his routine street journeys, however at the moment he works with 20 impartial suppliers from totally different elements of the nation to maintain up with the demand. 

Huge Barf Enterprise

Owl Model Discovery Kits usually sells pellets to science academics and instructors at wildlife schooling facilities primarily based in each U.S. state and Puerto Rico—and it is not the one one. 

The trade’s speedy progress displays educators’ rising want to pique youngsters’ curiosity in environmental conservation, Anderson says. In actual fact, it was a biology professor at Western Washington College, situated about 130 miles north of Anderson’s headquarters, who was among the many first to carry owl pellets into the classroom.

Within the Nineteen Seventies Irwin Slesnick began accumulating Barn Owl pellets round Bellingham, Washington, to make use of in his classroom and promote by his small science schooling provide enterprise. The peculiar commerce caught the eye of Bret Gaussoin, a bird-enthusiastic pupil who started trying to find the pellets himself and promoting them to Slesnick. He ultimately launched his personal firm, Pellets, Inc., in 1980. He acquired Slesnick’s enterprise 10 years later and Pellets, Inc. grew into one of many largest owl pellet suppliers on the planet. 

Pellets, Inc. was bought in 2022 by Carolina Organic Provide Firm, a number one world enterprise for laboratory tools, stay organisms, preserved specimens, and owl vomit. It has been carrying pellets for 40 years and sources nearly all of its merchandise from wholesalers within the Pacific Northwest. Demand for the product has but to wane, says Allan Morrison, the corporate’s vice chairman of operations, although he declined to share particulars on the corporate’s gross sales. 

Within the Classroom 

Anderson says that his firm was a principal pellet provider for Carolina till it purchased Pellets, Inc., however he didn’t thoughts dropping a little bit of enterprise. He feels most fulfilled working with educators and college students immediately: He generally visits lecture rooms and science camps to facilitate dissections and train youngsters about predator-prey relationships. He even designed a web based recreation referred to as “Sherlock Bones” the place customers can study digital owl pellets in preparation for the true factor. “Most youngsters are a little bit bit standoffish at first,” he says. “I encourage them to not be shy or overly mild and to only go on the factor. As soon as they discover a cranium, they’re normally hooked.” 

Throughout a typical dissection, college students use tweezers to drag aside the clumps and tease out bones. Instructors then problem the youngsters to establish their findings and what sort of animal they belonged to utilizing rodent skeleton diagrams. It’s an actual up-close lesson on the circle of life, Anderson says. 

Introducing youngsters to pellet probing early is greatest, says Marcy Engleman, senior coordinator of conservation schooling at John James Audubon Middle at Mill Grove, which hosts college students as younger as first grade for pellet dissections. “After they become older, they begin getting grossed out. I believe it’s as a result of they begin pondering more durable about what it truly is,” she says. Along with exposing them to the wonders of the owl digestive system, the exercise helps the kids observe their wonderful motor expertise. And with 5 resident rescue owls, the middle by no means has to fret about outsourcing for vomit provide. 

Pellets are well-liked outdoors of the organized classroom, too. Chook Collective, an avian-themed attire and residential items firm, started carrying individually-packaged pellets 4 years in the past and sees orders soar through the vacation season. “I believe that they’re nice items for anybody of any age who’s even a little bit bit interested by birds and is prepared to get out of their consolation zone,” says Chook Collective cofounder Angie Co. “I do know they’re probably not toys per se, however they positively carry out a child-like inquisitiveness in adults. Bodily capabilities are so thrilling to discover.” 

Anderson’s 5 youngsters realized to embrace the outside and its inhabitants by becoming a member of their dad on pellet-hunting expeditions. Even after leaving the nest, a few of the youngsters sometimes got here dwelling to affix Anderson for a drive. One son spent his faculty winter and spring breaks using shotgun; one other discovered catharsis within the street journeys after serving in Iraq. Whereas owl pellets have been a window into wildlife for his personal kids and college students throughout the nation, for Anderson and his household, they’ve additionally confirmed to be a livelihood and supply of kinship. “I believe it is secure to say we owe these owls so much,” he says.