Buying Barf: How Owl Pellets Became a Classroom Hit and Thriving Industry

Three or four times a year, Chris Anderson takes off on a multi-day road trip around the Western United States. He drives from sunup to sundown to scour farms, vineyards, and forests for the tiny, precious product that’s been the staple of his business for nearly three decades: owl pellets.

Anderson is the owner and founder of Owl Brand Discovery Kits, a Washington-based science supply and education company that carries owl-themed—and produced—merchandise. Its most popular items are packs of the fuzzy gray pellets that the birds upchuck every day. Dissecting these regurgitated balls, which contain a treasure trove of bones, fur, teeth and anything else that owls can’t digest, offers a quintessential wildlife biology lesson for young students around the country. And though today customers can purchase pellets on Amazon and Walmart, it’s on-the-ground scouts and suppliers like Anderson who power this niche industry. 

Audubon spoke with Anderson and others in the owl pellet scene to learn more about how and why these educational pieces of puke get from the bird to the classroom.

The Best Pellets 

Typically one to three inches long and easily mistaken for poop, pellets are the natural last step of an owl’s elaborate digestion process. Owls frequently swallow their food whole, after which two stomach chambers process their prey. The meal—usually a vole, mouse, or other small rodent—first travels into the proventriculus to be softened by acid and mucus. Next, it passes through the gizzard where the squishy parts, such as organs, muscles, and skin, are broken down, while the harder, indigestible material gets compressed into a pellet. The mush continues into the small intestine, but the pellet returns to the proventriculus for 6 to 10 hours until the bird finishes digesting and finally regurgitates it. Owls typically form and expel one to two pellets per day.

All owls produce pellets, but American Barn Owls are the go-to source for most collectors because of their predictable, accessible roosting sites. As the name hints, the birds like to settle in barns or other large, relatively low-traffic buildings and regularly leave pellets nearby. They’re also reliably attracted to nest boxes, making their drop sites even easier to find. 

Barn Owl pellets are also prime dissection material because of their sturdiness and uniformity, Anderson says. “Barn Owl pellets are stiff capsules coated in enzymes that have a sort of lacquered look to them,” he says. “Whereas a pellet that comes from a Great Horned Owl, for instance, kind of looks like an ice cream cone. It’s very gray, porous, and brittle, and full of broken, powdery bones.” Great Horned Owls tend to prey on larger mammals like skunks and rabbits and snap their bones before ingesting them. This makes it hard for dissectors to identify what's inside their pellets, but Anderson still sells them for anyone who's up for a challenge. 

Roost to Retail 

Since its founding in 1996, Owl Brand Discovery Kits has sold more than 10 million Barn Owl pellets. The company collects pellets from across 13 western states, often by visiting Barn Owl nest boxes it has installed on private properties. Anderson has longstanding relationships with landowners who okay the pellet hunts—many of whom he now considers close friends. On a road trip, he generally sticks to the same routes. But he also must stay up-to-date on any weather patterns or new agricultural practices and policies that might affect where owls live, hunt—and throw up. 

Flood irrigation, for example, is an energy-efficient watering technique that relies on gravity to saturate swaths of land. But the process drowns out voles and other burrowing mammals that Barn Owls feast upon. So, when some farmers in Colorado recently adopted the practice, owl pellets became scarce in areas once rich with them—and Anderson had to reroute. “Sometimes even well-intended farming practices can have a cascading effect on wildlife,” he says. “When faced with the absence of owls in an area, I always ask questions about how environmental changes might’ve influenced it.”

After he returns home with full bags of pellets, Anderson and his pellet-processing team (two part-time warehouse employees) get to work preparing the goods for distribution. They individually wrap the pellets in aluminum foil and bake them in an oven for 90 minutes to kill off bacteria. The barf balls are also popular nesting sites for insects, so heat-sterilizing them ensures that any eggs or larvae hidden inside are destroyed. Once the pellets come to room temperature, the group packages and ships them off to customers.

In 2024, the team processed between 35,000 and 45,000 Barn Owl pellets each month. Anderson used to collect all of the inventory on his routine road trips, but today he works with 20 independent suppliers from different parts of the country to keep up with the demand. 

Big Barf Business

Owl Brand Discovery Kits regularly sells pellets to science teachers and instructors at wildlife education centers based in every U.S. state and Puerto Rico—and it's not the only one. 

The industry’s speedy growth reflects educators’ increasing desire to pique kids’ interest in environmental conservation, Anderson says. In fact, it was a biology professor at Western Washington University, located about 130 miles north of Anderson’s headquarters, who was among the first to bring owl pellets into the classroom.

In the 1970s Irwin Slesnick started collecting Barn Owl pellets around Bellingham, Washington, to use in his classroom and sell through his small science education supply business. The peculiar trade caught the attention of Bret Gaussoin, a bird-enthusiastic student who began hunting for the pellets himself and selling them to Slesnick. He eventually launched his own company, Pellets, Inc., in 1980. He acquired Slesnick’s business 10 years later and Pellets, Inc. grew into one of the largest owl pellet suppliers in the world. 

Pellets, Inc. was purchased in 2022 by Carolina Biological Supply Company, a leading global enterprise for laboratory equipment, live organisms, preserved specimens, and owl vomit. It has been carrying pellets for 40 years and sources the majority of its merchandise from wholesalers in the Pacific Northwest. Demand for the product has yet to wane, says Allan Morrison, the company’s vice president of operations, though he declined to share details on the company’s sales. 

In the Classroom 

Anderson says that his company was a principal pellet supplier for Carolina until it bought Pellets, Inc., but he didn’t mind losing a bit of business. He feels most fulfilled working with educators and students directly: He sometimes visits classrooms and science camps to facilitate dissections and teach kids about predator-prey relationships. He even designed an online game called “Sherlock Bones” where users can examine digital owl pellets in preparation for the real thing. “Most kids are a little bit standoffish at first,” he says. “I encourage them not to be shy or overly gentle and to just go at the thing. Once they find a skull, they’re usually hooked.” 

During a typical dissection, students use tweezers to pull apart the clumps and tease out bones. Instructors then challenge the kids to identify their findings and what kind of animal they belonged to using rodent skeleton diagrams. It’s a real up-close lesson on the circle of life, Anderson says. 

Introducing kids to pellet probing early is best, says Marcy Engleman, senior coordinator of conservation education at John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove, which hosts students as young as first grade for pellet dissections. “When they get older, they start getting grossed out. I think it’s because they start thinking harder about what it actually is,” she says. In addition to exposing them to the wonders of the owl digestive system, the activity helps the youngsters practice their fine motor skills. And with five resident rescue owls, the center never has to worry about outsourcing for vomit supply. 

Pellets are popular outside of the organized classroom, too. Bird Collective, an avian-themed apparel and home goods company, began carrying individually-packaged pellets four years ago and sees orders soar during the holiday season. “I think that they’re great gifts for anyone of any age who’s even a little bit curious about birds and is willing to get out of their comfort zone,” says Bird Collective cofounder Angie Co. “I know they’re not really toys per se, but they definitely bring out a child-like inquisitiveness in adults. Bodily functions are so exciting to explore.” 

Anderson’s five kids learned to embrace the outdoors and its inhabitants by joining their dad on pellet-hunting expeditions. Even after leaving the nest, some of the kids occasionally came home to join Anderson for a drive. One son spent his college winter and spring breaks riding shotgun; another found catharsis in the road trips after serving in Iraq. While owl pellets have been a window into wildlife for his own children and students across the country, for Anderson and his family, they've also proven to be a livelihood and source of kinship. "I think it's safe to say we owe these owls a lot," he says.