New kit on the block

Doris delivers the goods

Doris and little legs: this is a still from the video you can see in full below

It’s a … kit for sure, but boy or girl?  Who knows …

Such exciting news.  Steve and Doris are parents.  Doris gave birth to the kit, likely at the end of May.  I wanted to make sure all was good and also that there was not more than one kit, so don’t put the late announcement down to a total lack of care or late and sloppy blogging!  Having said that, I am certainly often guilty of the latter.

Big splash: Doris and new kit

Beavers tend to have between one and six kits, but two to four is common.  However, in the case of a first birth from a young mother, one or two is more typical.  This applies to Doris, so having just one kit would not be considered unusual. 

Over the last few months, we suspected that Doris was pregnant.  It is almost impossible to tell male from female beavers on camera, but one beaver did seem to be putting on a lot of weight and was having more difficulty moving around.  This led to high hopes, but it did seem to drag on.  Their gestation period is just over 100 days.  But, I did begin to wonder if it was a case of just too many pies …

However, the final, perhaps more reliable indicator, was that Doris revealed enlarged teats in May.  The teats are normally hidden by fur, thus the difficulty of distinguishing between sexes, but appear in the later stages of pregnancy. 

Doris became distinguishable from Steve as her teats became visible toward the end of pregnancy. She was also eating for two. We leave carrots on a platform as it is much easier to check beaver health if we can see them clearly. She was struggling to get on the platform by the end of her pregnancy, but a carrot is always worthwhile!

We then suspect she was feeding the baby inside the lodge, keeping her kit safely out of harms way.  We finally got sight of her kit after Jess reviewed footage on 9 June.  We waited to see if we would see two or more kits together, but given we have not, we have concluded we have just the one.

I like to think that Steve has been helpful.  In early June, Steve (or we think it was him, given Doris had her paws full) was working on what has turned out to be a bit of a training pool close to the lodge. 

Steve (we think) creates a new "training pool" near the lodge

 This pool is now in regular use … through the little one needs a little help getting out

Doris helps the new kit out of the pool ... ignore the date stamp, it reset after new batteries

Next problem … the name.  Given we cannot be sure if we have a him or a her, we might need to go gender neutral.  And naturally Welsh.  Quite like Aeron, which means berry or fruit, and is or course one of our two local rivers (the other being the Teifi).  Other options might be Morgan, or Reese … time for a poll, I think.  Watch out Instagram … this might just blow up the web / break the internet.

As an aside, does this mean that Steve has settled down?  As I’ve previously noted, he came to us via the National Trust Wallington (Northumberland) and following three escapes got the name Steve, after Steve McQueen, star of The Great Escape.  He was, I am told, looking for romance.  Well, he seems to have found it with Doris …

Much easier getting in than out ...