Hello handsome face!
Hi dude! What do you think? Do you want to come eat some breakfast?
Here, do you need some help? Here, yeah, up we go! [baby beaver noises]
Oh! Nice work! There you go, here!
Would you like an apple? Yeah, there you go, don't fall!
Hi guys! I wanted to give you an update on our little baby beaver here who's growing so big,
so let me tell you all about what Huckleberry has been up to...
[Intro music]
Huck is about nine weeks old now and he has tripled in size
you can see he's eating solid foods now, his favorite are apple slices and
rodent blocks, which - this is really good for him, gives him lots of his nutrients.
Yeah, eat it all in your mouth! [laughing]
Good job! He loves eating! He's a really good eater, he loves social interaction
but there are some other things that we're still working on. Huck has mild
neurological damage and it was diagnosed through watching his behavior and working with our vet.
He has trouble balancing - he'll often step sideways and stumble.
He has trouble moving over objects and we're still determining If it's safe for him to full-on swim and dive.
We're also concerned about his eyes.
They water quite frequently and we're wondering if he can see out of his right eye.
Further behavioral assessment is needed to determine what his abilities are.
What do you think? Here! Here! There you go!
Good job!
He is really social and I love that, but like in the wild he's particular about who he's familiar with
or social with. So he's bonded very strongly to me, but he's still quite wary of strangers.
Because he's so comfortable with me, and we've established a really strong trust bond,
I've actually been able to take him out on public presentations already
so we can educate about how amazing beavers are.
Since he is a baby beaver right now my favorite part to talk about during public presentations is the fact that
Baby beavers actually have to fart in order to get all the air out of their belly, to leave their lodge.
So it's a perfect time to talk about it, he's a baby!
One of the things that I'm working with him right now is trying to get him to practice some gross motor skills,
so getting him to balance. You got it buddy! Oh, that was -
That was a pretty good one, look at him go! Yeah!
I want to work on his gross motor skills so that he can be the best beaver he can be,
and I can offer Him an enclosure with varying levels, and different substrates,
and he can manage it well.
A couple weeks ago we moved him from his temporary enclosure in just the kiddie pool
to this larger space. This is actually our late American mink Frasier's old enclosure
but it's working out well for Huck here because we could put his kiddie Pool right inside
and let him explore at his own pace.
Something exciting that happened in the last two weeks is that he - he started eating solid foods,
but then he started chewing on his wood, and you can see that he has
chewed the bark off of these aspen branches and ahh he's growing up so fast!
As he continues to grow we'll continue to make modifications for his needs.
I'm hoping to be able to remove the kiddie pool and get a deeper tank that he might be able to swim
and fully submerge if he's able to do that.
For now we're just gonna keep going at his pace and whatever he needs, we'll give him.
Thank you guys for going on this adventure with me and Huckleberry!
If you'd like to go on an adventure with us every week subscribe to our YouTube channel Animal Wonders Montana.
Thanks! And we'll see you next time.
[Outro music]