Stuck in concrete, saved by donor feathers: Great horned owl returns to wild

Kanab: A great horned owl found covered in concrete has flown to freedom after six months of care at a Utah sanctuary.

A good Samaritan found him in a concrete mixer in October and called the Best Friends Animal Society headquarters 80 miles away in Kanab.

After removing the concrete, the team at the nonprofit’s wildlife refuge, Wild Friends, realized the young owl required new feathers to achieve silent flight, which is a necessity in the wild.

They waited patiently for the owl to molt, which would have replaced the damaged feathers naturally, but his spring molt was not going as predicted.

That led the Wild Friends team to take a training course about a procedure they had never done before: imping, which requires using donor feathers and adhesive to replace the raptor feathers.

Luckily, they found a donation from a wildlife rescue group in Northern Utah where a great horned owl of similar size had passed away.

To prepare for surgery, Supervisor Bart Richwalski kept track of the owl’s feather patterns. After the imping procedure and recovery, the owl was released back into the wild.