Is this a beaver?

[4 the Birds]

We had this up on our porch today and I got a picture from the cell phone. Looks like a baby beaver to me but my wife thinks maybe a muskrat or badger. Very odd since we are on several acres of fenced farm land with no rivers anywhere near. We do have a farm pond but I have never seen any critters since we have several dogs within the property. We did have some of our free range chickens killed the other day but my thinking was that it was a raccoon. I found the dig hole under the range fence and shored that up.

Any thoughts and would this be a predator threat? Thanks.

 

[roosterhavoc]

Haha it's either a woodchuck/groundhog or a Marmot depending on where you live. No it's not a predator. Don't worry about him unless he starts tearing up your yard.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Naw, looks like a ground hog to me.

 

[bobbi-j]

Groundhog, woodchuck, or whistle-pig (all the same animal). No threat to your chickens but will eat your garden and dig under building foundations and cause problems there. Beavers have large, flat leathery-looking tails. Muskrats look similar to a regular rat but much bigger, and badgers are larger, have flatter heads and entirely different coloring. I've lived where I do for 32 years and have only seen 3 badgers. Ours are kind of shy, I guess.

 

[Bunnylady]

Beavers have flat, hairless tails; Muskrat tails are round, but also hairless. Badgers have black and white striped faces and are wider than they are high.

I agree with roosterhavoc; that's either a woodchuck or a marmot. They are both herbivores, so no, no predator threat there.

 

[roosterhavoc]

If you look at a picture of a beaver and a woodchuck the faces are very similar. It's easy to mistake them however woodchucks don't hang out in the water and beavers rarely come onto people porches. Lol

 

[centrarchid]

They are interesting to watch. They like large ginny pigs in their feeding habits. They are not overly socialble but they form loose groups so more than one likely present. We used to target them with either a 30-30 or hammer when caught in our soybean feilds. One can decimate an acre easily.

They are quite abundant in our state capital where it is no big deal to see three or four at a time. Here they are almost as abundant as squirrels.

 

[4 the Birds]

Ah... You guys are good! Woodchuck or Ground Hog sounds logical. Just never seen either on open ground like this. He must be moving through. Thanks!

 

[roosterhavoc]

If he starts causing damage you can catch him in a cage trap. Hanging an apple in the back of the cage works well. For some reason once the apple starts to rot they can't resist it.

 

[4 the Birds]

If he starts causing damage you can catch him in a cage trap. Hanging an apple in the back of the cage works well. For some reason once the apple starts to rot they can't resist it.

Thanks for the tip Rooster. He was laying dead still out in the yard a few hours later. I went to the barn and fetched a long handled net for fishing and surprised him. He was a heavy sucker! Does not look it in the pictures but he must have been 35 to 45 lbs. he was fighting in the net but I was able to take him to the back of our property and released him on the other side of our field fence. I hope that he does not return. He was lucky that our dog pack was not out on roaming at the time. We have 7 dogs and they will corner and kill once they pick up a scent trail.