I watched a video the other day with an orphaned beaver living in someone’s home as a pet. This reminded me of someone I used to go to school with who had a pet beaver. I phoned him recently to get information about whether beavers made good pets.
There have been numerous occasions where young and orphaned beavers have been kept as pets. However, adult beavers don’t make good pets.
Beavers are adorable, and it was refreshing to see in my research that people have looked after orphaned beavers at home. Please read on if you want to look after a beaver and know more, including what they eat, where they sleep, and much more.
What Do Beavers Eat?
To keep a beaver as a pet, you must know what they eat—their diet changes as the seasons of the year change. Beavers are herbivores and will eat what is in season around them. The inner bark of trees is their favorite, especially during the colder winter months.
They often store food underwater in the winter to access the food if the water freezes. During spring and fall, a beaver’s diet consists of grasses and wood, such as beech, maple, birch, alder, black cherry, and aspen trees.
Beavers enjoy the bark of the trees and the smooth and soft layer just below the bark, the cambium. They will chew and gnaw and eat the wood. Beavers also eat the foliage and twigs of red maples, willows, and aspens.
In the summertime, only 10% of the Beavers’ diet consists of trees and woody plants, with grasses, shrubs, and aquatic plants making up the rest of the diet. Cattails, bulrush, pondweeds, water lilies, rhizomes, and other aquatic plants make up the rest of the beaver’s summer diet, along with ferns and leaves.
Getting the proper diet for a pet beaver would be a tough job for anyone not living in the right environment.
With beavers spending a lot of time in the water, you could be forgiven for thinking they would eat fish, but this is not the case. Eating aquatic plants gives a clean environment, allowing the fish and the beaver to live together peacefully.
A lot of time every day would be spent cutting twigs and sticks for your pet beaver.
Do Beavers Get Along With Cats, Dogs, and Other Pets?
If you have other pets, such as dogs and cats, it would be challenging for them to live alongside a beaver. Beavers are extremely territorial animals known to bite and claw dogs encroaching onto their territory. Beavers can cause fatal wounds to other animals with their long front teeth and sharp claws. Although people have had orphaned beavers as pets from a young age, they are wild animals and can be very aggressive in their habitat. When looked after from an early age, beavers can be trained to be relatively tame, following you around the house like a dog or cat and hopping onto your lap for a stroke. A man in Belarus is the only known fatality. While driving home, he saw a beaver on the side of the road and stopped his vehicle. The man tried to pick the animal up to have his picture taken, but the beaver bit him several times. One of the bites went through a major artery in his leg, causing severe blood loss. There have been several attacks by the Eurasian Beaver, similar to the North American Beaver, although they don’t normally attack humans. This has been attributed partly to the spring season bringing a more aggressive nature from the young beavers trying to stake their territory in the world. Beavers can also become confused and disoriented during the daytime and attack out of fear, as they are generally nocturnal. How Much Do Beavers Sleep?
Beavers sleep approximately 11 hours daily and are nocturnal animals but can also be diurnally active. This mostly happens in areas that are disturbed very little by humans. Beavers work at night to forage and can create a large lodge over several nights. During the day, beavers spend the day resting and sleeping, waiting for dusk to start their work. If you consider keeping one as a pet, bear this in mind. If you still believe they are a pet for you, then you will be happy to know that the beaver does not hibernate in the winter, giving you time all year to bond.Are Beavers Aggressive Toward Humans?
