On a wing and a glass: Meet the tiny owl chicks being fed at the dinner table

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:10 AM on 21st May 2008

The feeding method is certainly not conventional, but then again these chicks aren't exactly what you would call your average dinner guests.

In fact, George Hedges has propped his scrawny bald charges, which will eventually grow into fully fledged barn owls, into the wine glasses for feeding time.

Mr Hedges, of Devons Eagles, finds this the easiest method to give the fragile babies their daily morsels of food - mouse and cockerel chicks.

These baby barn owls are propped up in a wine glass after owner George Hedges found it was the easiest way to feed them

He said: "Rather than holding them and gripping them, it gives them space, and the wine glass supports them."

Mr Hedges uses a tiny pair of tweezers to give the birds little pieces of chopped-up meat.
The cotton wool in the glasses stops them from slipping and props the smaller ones up so their heads can reach above the brim of the glass.

These two chicks were born less than a week ago and Mr Hedges said they were being reared for flying and were taken away from their mother to tame them.

He said: "You can't have parent-reared owls.

"It's illegal to put a barn owl back into the wild and if you leave them with their parents, they can't be handled."

The adult barn owl has a wing span of 85cm, dwarfing their bodies

In five weeks time, the bald babies will turn white and downy, and at 10 weeks old, they will be fully grown and ready to fly the nest ... or wine glass.

Fully grown, the adult barn owl stands 25cm tall and is 33-35cm from the top of its head to the tip of its tail, with a wing span of 85cm.

It has golden or buff-coloured upper pans, threaded with silver grey, with white under-parts and a distinctive white, heart-shaped face.

In the wild, barn owls have become increasingly rare due to factors such as loss of habitat and deaths on roads.

Mr Hedges said there were now more barn owls in captivity than there were in the wild in the UK. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1020862/On-wing-glass-Meet-tiny-owl-chicks-fed-dinner-table.html