What to do if you have owls in your factory or warehouse

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Vicky Stark

28 October 2025 | 16:17

Murray says he gets between 70 to a 100 phone calls a day about owls, 30 to 40 percent of those are for superstition-related issues.

What to do if you have owls in your factory or warehouse

The Own Rescue Centre is educating people about owls.

This follows the recent death of an owl at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Midrand.

The Centre's Brendan Murray explains that he got an urgent call to remove the bird.

"You know a lot of the time the health inspectors they don't want birds inside, especially a food processing plant, so the bird needed to vacate the premises."

But Murray says while he was making his way to the plant, he got a call to say the owl was killed.

He says because owls often live near factories and warehouses and like to be inside during the day, he's urging business owners to put owl breeding boxes on the outside of their buildings.

"They're not inside setting off motion sensors and also they're great for rodent control."

As for capturing an owl, he says they use different kinds of nets and they also have a net gun which works really well... "It shoots a 2-metre by 2-metre net almost like a cartoon".

"Or a lot of the times during the day they sleep on the rafters and we sneak up and grab them."

Murray says he gets between 70 to a 100 phone calls a day about owls, 30 to 40 percent of those are for superstition-related issues. He says they also get a lot of calls from schools.

"And then what we do is, we catch the bird and it's a perfect opportunity to teach the kids... And you show them it's just a bird... that's all it is, there's no need to be scared of it."

To listen to Brendan Murray speaking to 702's John Perlman, click the audio below.

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