Beaver Kits Out & About
Last January or February beavers mated (in the water) and in May or June gave birth to 1 – 9 (average 2 – 4) precocial kits. Young beavers are born fully furred, their eyes are open and their incisors are visible. Within four days they are able to swim, but it’s usually a month or more before they are seen outside the lodge. Part of the reason for this is their buoyancy, which prevents them from diving down through the tunnel to get out of the lodge. By the age of two months they are able to submerge themselves and they have begun grooming the water-repelling secretions of their anal glands onto their fur, so they are fully water-repellent. They are ready for their semi-aquatic life. Sometime between two and three months is when they are often first observed by humans — usually in late August or September you can see three generations of beavers in an active pond.
When they are three days old, kits begin to eat vegetation brought to them inside the lodge by their parents and year-old siblings. By the time they are two months old, they are weaned. The three-month-old kit pictured (measuring about a foot from head to base of tail) is able to debark a twig as deftly as its parents.
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