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Better Farming Ontario Featured Articles

Better Farming Ontario magazine is published 11 times per year. After each edition is published, we share featured articles online.


Making a home for barn owls

Friday, April 8, 2016

With old wooden barns disappearing from the farm landscape, barn owls are going homeless. A biologist from Elk Grove, Calif., appears to have fixed that.

Mark Browning has developed a low-maintenance plastic nest box.  On a 100-acre vineyard in 2012, barn owl pairs occupied 18 of these nests, rearing 66 young and eating an estimated 10,000 voles, rats and pocket gophers in one season alone.

According to PR Newswire, the boxes are used by departments of natural resources in Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri and South Carolina, also by several Audubon chapters and thousands of vineyards and orchards. It has also been featured on America's Heartland on PBS.

The Barn Owl Box Company (https://www.barnowlbox.com/), based in Pittsburgh, Pa., is now developing boxes for screech owls, kestrels, bluebirds and song birds in general. 


This all begs the question: where did barn owls live before there were barns? BF

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October 2025

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Effective Strategies for Corn Soybean and Wheat

Thursday, October 2, 2025

As reported on the OMAFRA website fieldcropnews.com, effective crop residue management in corn, soybean, and wheat fields is key to profitability and long-term soil health. It begins at harvest, with combines and headers set correctly to size and spread residue evenly across the... Read this article online

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