A whole night of hunting, packed into something the size of your thumb. Pull it apart and you find real bones: skulls, jaws, ribs, tiny teeth. They tell you exactly what a barn owl ate.
Everything ships within 24 hours of payment, with free stickers, posters and guides in the box.
Classroom essentials: pellets, picks, probes, bone ID charts and the Habitat, Habits & Prey teacher’s guide. One pellet per student.
One sterilized pellet plus essential tools for guided, anatomy-focused exploration.
It’s the part of dinner an owl can’t digest. For a scientist, it’s a sealed record of the food web.
Barn owls hunt at night, mostly for voles, mice and shrews, and swallow small prey whole.
The meat is digested. Fur, bones and teeth can’t be, so they stay behind in the owl’s gizzard.
Hours later the leftovers are pressed into a furry capsule and coughed up. Ours arrive sterilized and wrapped in foil.
Owls barely damage bones, so a pellet often holds near-complete skeletons. Students rebuild the night, bone by bone.
Pellets come out the beak, not the other end. They’re mostly fur and bone, with almost no smell.
Every OBDK pellet is sterilized and individually wrapped, ready for a classroom or a kitchen table.
Every pellet is a different meal. No two students find the same thing, and that’s the fun of it.
Look closely at the bones and it’s an anatomy lesson. Step back and ask what the owl ate and where, and it’s ecology. We built a kit for each.
Each student examines real skeletal material to build core life science skills.
Bone identification
Comparative anatomy
Structure & function
Taxonomic classificationStudents use physical evidence to explore ecosystems in a teacher-led investigation.
Predator–prey relationships
Food web structure
Habitat & diet
Energy transfer
Students build scientific thinking through guided, hands-on investigation, in a classroom, a lab or at home.
NGSS-aligned resources come with every kit.
Bone charts, guides and printables from Owl Brand, free for classrooms and families. Print as many as you need.
Use the bone identification charts to work out what the owl ate: vole, shrew, mouse, mole, rat or bird. Every bone is labeled, from skull to pelvis.
Download the bone chart →The full teacher guide, a picture book for younger students and two printables for the wall.
Play
98 classroom activities, science games and a virtual owl pellet to dissect on Kidwings. Free, with nothing to sign up for.
Open Kidwings →© Owl Brand Supply Company. Reproduction permitted for education purposes; not for resale.
Short films from real kits. Tap any of them for sound.
For decades, OBDK has supported educators and families with safe, sterilized dissection materials. Our mission is to make biological discovery approachable, meaningful, and accessible to all learners.
Millions of pellets in classrooms, nature centers and homes, with a 4.7★ rating on Amazon.
One pellet, a whole family.
Everything else we make grew from that one idea: put real evidence in kids’ hands. Free online labs, an academy for teachers, owl cards, nest boxes and a wolf center all start with a pellet.
After the dissection, the questions start. Our family of sites keeps them going, mostly for free. Collect all six. Teacher passports are coming soon.
Yes. Every OBDK pellet is sterilized and individually wrapped before it ships, so it’s ready for a classroom or a kitchen table.
Mostly fur and the bones of small animals like voles, mice and shrews: skulls, jaws, ribs and leg bones. Every kit includes a bone identification chart to match them up.
For a whole class led by a teacher, choose Ecology Foundations. For one pellet per student or home learning, choose Biology & Anatomy Solo Essentials. If you already have tools and just need pellets, choose No Frill Refill.
K-12 classrooms, homeschool, nature centers and university biology labs. NGSS-aligned resources come with every kit.
From our own collection network across 13 western states, about 400,000 a year. We also supply other owl pellet companies.
Questions about a kit, an order or a purchase order? Call us toll-free, or send a message.
