20260309-Juvenile Great Horned Owl-1

We got a call from the property owner that during the night she heard some coyotes and then in the morning her dogs were acting a little odd and here she found this very young Great Horned owl.  Before I got there, it had moved itself from the yard up into a rock garden and sat in a bush. When I looked at it, I had never seen a great horned owl that young before so I knew I was going to need some assistance from the ICU folks. I contacted Kim W. and shared the pictures I had taken. I could not find anything wrong with the owl. She estimated its age to be 4-5 weeks old.  We were planning to re-nest it but out of an abundance of caution, she wanted me to take the owl to another ICU person for triage.  Kim N. looked it over and she was concerned about the right wing around the wrist.  It just didn’t feel right. So she took the owl to our facility and performed x-rays and could see small pieces of bone in the right wrist that had fragmented and she also thought it was possible that it had a radius fracture. The x-rays were sent to our veterinarian for review.

We canceled the re-nesting as he will be staying in our ICU until we have a determination from our veterinarian.  It was given fluids, pain medicine and was fed over 100 grams of mice!  It had a keel score of approximately two so it was not emaciated. Perhaps mom might have been feeding it?

We had a very high wind event a week ago and we were just wondering if this juvenile was starting to branch, which means it would be on the edge of the nest or slightly out of it, and the wind might have caught it and taken it to the ground.

Rescue Team Mary K.