Injuries Almost Cause A Great Horned Owl To Starve

The following story about a great horned owl was submitted by World Bird Sanctuary in Missouri.

Meet great horned owl 21-342. This owl came to the World Bird Sanctuary’s rehabilitation hospital on July 16, 2021 from O’Fallon, Missouri with old ocular trauma and old wounds to one of her feet. She was a big owl, but even at 1,257 grams (about 2.8 pounds) , her body condition score was only a 1.

The past trauma she had suffered likely kept her from hunting, as she was already an adult bird with plenty of experience. She was hypothermic, very dehydrated, and critically emaciated. A catheter was placed to help improve her hydration. She was also started on a diet of half strength EmerAid IC Carnivore after absorbing her first round of fluids.

Over the next few days, 342’s hydration slowly improved and she seemed to be processing nutrition well enough to be moved up to full strength EmerAid. Unfortunately she started to crash a couple days later and had to be moved back to half strength. She continued to struggle with GI stasis and possible organ damage from her chronic emaciation for the next couple weeks.

EmerAid IC Carnivore tubed four times per day sustained her and helped her put on a little weight until she was finally ready to start having small pieces of clean rabbit meat added into her diet. The amount of EmerAid was slowly reduced as the solid food increased until, a month after her initial intake, she was finally able to process a full meal’s worth of solid food and come off the EmerAid entirely.

After another month, she had built her muscle strength back up in one of our smaller outdoor enclosures and was ready for a big flight. She was moved to a large flight to finish conditioning before finally being released on September 20. Upon release, she weighed a whopping 1,817 grams (about 4 pounds) with an ideal 3.5 body condition score.