When I started Nature’s Remedy, I built, installed and maintained wooden nesting boxes for the first five years. The advantage of wood is definitely the “short term” costs, but the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages!

  1. You can only ventilate a wooden box so much. A wooden box becomes an oven in the warmer months! I rescue owls, and in the warmer months, I am swamped with calls from people reporting that owlets are evacuating their boxes because of the heat buildup inside wooden boxes. Those are the lucky ones. The younger owlets who can’t escape have no chance! They are definitely not safe habitats.
  2. Wooden boxes lack durability. Unpainted wooden boxes may last three years before they need to be replaced. Weather fluctuations cause expansion and contraction of the wood (plywood) which causes the joints to separate over time and delamination of the plywood. Painting the exterior of the box white helps somewhat with the heat and durability.
  3. Wooden nesting boxes make great beehives, and once honey bees take over a box, it is history. I lost several boxes due to bees and actually lost owlets because of the box being “swarmed”! A bees’ nest will not adhere to a plastic box, and our unique placement of the ventilation holes on both shells deter the bees and wasps from entering the inner shell.
  4. The biggest negative with wooden boxes is cleaning them out, a necessity after every successful nesting season. I literally used a hammer and chisel to try to remove the debris which bonds like concrete to porous plywood. The danger of doing this is the risk of contracting hantavirus, which I did! Remember what you are cleaning out of a nesting box:  rodents, partial rodents, excrement from both owls and rodents, and sometimes owl remains. Even being fully masked and covered from head to toe didn’t spare me. The dust you breathe while cleaning a box is invisible and can be deadly!

Barn owls are attracted to nesting boxes because of the entry hole, whether the box is wooden or plastic. Some people say, “barn owls prefer wooden boxes over plastic”, and they are full of it! Did a barn owl tell you that? Did they also tell you that they prefer the nesting box to be 15 feet in the air and facing a certain direction?? In the 15 years I’ve been doing this, I have never seen a barn owl with a tape measure or compass! It’s funny that the same people who say barn owls prefer wood are selling wooden nesting boxes.

I have first-hand experience using both wood and plastic. Plastic nesting boxes are, by far, the better long-term investment, and they never need to be replaced. The dual-shelled design of the Owl Barn is the ONLY box that offers a constant fixed air barrier between the two shells. The other dual shelled plastic box I worked with had a floating inner shell which doesn’t allow for this barrier. The fixed inner shell and the one piece face plate (barn door) of the Owl Barn keeps the debris inside the inner shell, making for easy clean out. Our design allows the inner shell to slide in and out easily, keeping the debris inside the inner shell. No other nesting box, wooden or plastic, has this design. That’s why the Owl Barn is considered the best barn owl nesting box on the market today!