“Cottage” for Nutrias

Having become a pensioner, I took up breeding nutria (swamp beavers, or coypu) and became convinced how profitable this business is. With low costs for keeping these herbivorous and, moreover, very unpretentious animals, I get not only tasty meat (on average 2—3 kg from each animal), which is in no way inferior to rabbit meat in nutritional value and dietary properties, but also (most importantly!) valuable fur that approaches mink or arctic fox in durability and, in wear, exceeds “fur-coat” rabbit tenfold.

The number of animals needed for keeping is determined by the capabilities of the farm (availability of a household plot, building materials, feed supply, etc.). The minimum number of adult nutria for obtaining offspring from them is one male and two females.

Females of the same litter get along well with each other and, after giving birth, feed the young without distinguishing whose they are. Considering that each usually produces at least two litters a year (five to seven pups in each), it is easy to calculate: even with the minimum number of adult nutria, a private farm may hold up to 35—45 animals.

In our locality, with a short and mild winter, outdoor keeping of these animals is practiced, in ground-level or slightly raised houses (cages) with open or closed runs. However, when significant cold snaps are expected, it is recommended to move the nutria into an insulated shed.

Houses (cages) for nutria may be of various designs: single-, two- and three-tier, stationary and portable. Moreover, these unpretentious animals can successfully raise offspring even in barrels and barely lit basements. However, it is better if thrifty owners take care in advance of convenient and practical “cottages” for their nutria, guided by their own capabilities and general recommendations for the proper keeping of land beavers.

In particular, on my mini-farm the preferred housing for the animals is a wooden two-chamber house (nest and feeding compartments), lined inside with metal mesh (so that the nutria do not gnaw the wooden base). This is both a dwelling and a solid place of shelter. And the mesh run (aviary) adjoining the house closely and connected to it (Fig. 1) by a wooden transfer pipe is willingly used by the animals for exercise.

The single-pitch roof (ceiling hatch) of the house should open or be removable for observing the nutria’s behavior. Access to them is also provided through a mesh door made in the side or top wall of the run. In summer it is desirable that the animals spend more time outdoors in the air and sun, so the above-mentioned run should preferably be placed on the southern side.

The run is a frame (for example, of reinforcing bar 9—13 mm in diameter) with inclined or vertical side walls. Covering is with mesh of galvanized wire of a cross-section of at least 2.5 mm2 with mesh openings of 25×25 or 30×30 mm. The resulting run is 1400 mm long, 1000 mm wide, and 600—700 mm high.

The run can also be made of wooden bars with the above-mentioned mesh fastened to them from the inside. Such a run is cleaned through the upper (and also mesh) transom.

The floor in the runs should slope toward the built-in micro-pool, which may be a standard galvanized trough measuring 900x500x200 mm. The water for bathing the nutria is changed periodically, and in summer this is done twice a day. To make this operation as easy as possible, a water hose is used for filling and flushing, and dirty water is drained (through a hole in the bottom of the micro-pool closed with a plug) into a drainage ditch running under the run.

As already noted, the run is connected to the house by a wooden pipe. The recommended passageway cross-section is 300×200 mm (for adult nutria) and 200×200 mm (for young animals). The passageway is closed with a slide gate.

The material for the pipe, for the wooden base of the house, and for the partition is 20—25 mm board (tongued-and-grooved or with a selected rabbet). For bedding it is better to use mixed-grass hay, wheat or rice straw, and even coarse sawdust. All of this should be used dry and clean.

Houses for the main herd and for the young in this case differ only in the size of the opening in the partition, equal to the passageway cross-section of the pipe already specified above.

As drinkers for nutria, some kind of containers are usually adapted (fortunately, on any farm there is more than enough choice for this). Industrially produced automatic, fairly compact designs intended for watering and feeding suckling piglets are also used. However, I recommend using so-called nod drinkers, which anyone can make even under cramped home conditions.

At the heart of this simple device (Fig. 2) is a stainless-steel metering tube open at one end and able to tilt in the vertical plane, inserted into a length of thick-walled rubber hose that acts not only as a water supplier but also as an elastic water-supply interrupter. The reliability of the tube-and-rubber joint is ensured by flaring the lower end of the tube, as well as by a wire twist and a mushroom-shaped bushing that is not only a kind of band but also a one-sided stop limiting the travel of the meter in the horizontal plane.

The required water level is set using an equalizing tank of the water-supply system to which this nod drinker is connected (by means of a fitting). When a nutria wants to drink, it presses its paw on the metering tube. The hose then bends, and a portion of water pours out of the drinker. The drinker returns to its initial position under the action of the elasticity of the thick-walled rubber hose.

Feeders can also be of various kinds. For example, in the form of a trough-shaped manger whose analogue is the “pig feeder” (see No. 7’2000 of the magazine “Modelist-Konstruktor”). I make them in pairs from 350 mm lengths of pipe (stainless steel, assortment 140×2.5 mm). I cut the blank with an oxyacetylene torch (lengthwise in two), weld half-disks of the same material to the ends of the halves (Fig. 3). On the outside, in the middle of the bottoms, I weld in a pair of fastening rods (bolts) each and thus obtain two feeders at once. I place each along the front wall of the feeding compartment of the house, pass the fastening rod through a hole in the floor, and screw on the nuts.

As practice shows, such feeders take up little space, do not tip over, and are also easy to clean.

On subsidiary farms, food (but only not contaminated or spoiled!) and garden waste are often used for feeding nutria: bread leftovers, rusks, leftovers of porridge and soups, tops and raw vegetable peelings, boiled potato peelings… However, these rodents can also eat what is usually recommended for rabbits, sheep, and cattle. In addition, nutria willingly eat marsh vegetation: rhizomes and young shoots of cattail, reed, and rush, as well as branches of oak, willow, poplar, and birch.

In grape-growing areas, grapevine removed during spring and autumn pruning is used as branch and juicy feed for swamp beavers. Considering that, as agricultural science asserts, this feed material is almost equal in nutritional value to root crops, it makes sense to prepare it in autumn for winter storage. And it should be fed in the mesh runs, similarly to branches of deciduous trees.

As for root and tuber crops, they are used mainly from September to April. Of juicy feeds, nutria are given beet, carrot, and turnip. Sometimes vegetables are also included in the ration (cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, sorrel, lettuce, zucchini, pumpkin, watermelons, melons), and at times also waste from processing fruits, berries, etc. Potatoes are usually boiled, mashed, and added to bran or compound feed. Care is taken that the mixtures are thick. Before feeding, small balls are made from them, which the animals eat willingly.

A concentrated compound feed for nutria is produced according to recipe K-91-1. Its main part is barley (45% of the total mass), corn (40%), then come oilcake, sunflower meal (8%), fish meal (6%), and finally 0.5% each of table salt and feed chalk.

If individual components are unavailable, others of similar nutritional value are added instead. For example, barley and corn are replaced with oats or wheat, sunflower meal with linseed, soybean, or pea meal, and fish meal with meat-and-bone meal or feed yeast. If the farm has the necessary set of feeds and grinders for them (for example, homemade ones made according to designs published in Nos. 11/12’98, 8’99, and 2’2000 of the magazine “Modelist-Konstruktor”), preparing such concentrates is not particularly difficult.

Before feeding, the compound feed is always moistened at the rate of 1—1.5 parts of water per 1 part of dry matter. Many people (including the author of these lines) practice steaming, and not only of compound feeds but of most of what is fed to nutria. In particular, local feeds of animal origin are also subject to heat treatment (skim or whole milk, meat-and-bone meal, slaughterhouse waste, fish and fish-processing products, freshwater mollusks, leeches, frogs, river crayfish, etc.).

Various devices have been developed and successfully used for steaming feeds (see, for example, No. 6’97 of the magazine “Modelist-Konstruktor”), as well as special equipment. For small subsidiary farms, a feed steamer made from an old aluminum milk can, or better still a stainless-steel one, can also be recommended (Fig. 4).

The bottom of such a vessel is cut off and, after its edges are slightly drawn out with a hammer on some anvil (even an improvised one), is turned into a wide lid. What remains of the blank can is turned neck down and set on a homemade tripod of steel rod (reinforcing bar will do quite well).

A grate is fastened in the upper part of the shell, and two tubular electric heaters (TENs) from old household appliances such as a samovar or kettle are mounted in the neck. Into the resulting feed steamer (Fig. 4) 3—4 liters of water are poured, the raw material (feeds) is placed on the grate, and, after connecting the TENs to the power supply (observing electrical safety rules, preferably through an isolation transformer), food is prepared for the “cottage” nutria as well as other farm animals.

“Modelist-Konstruktor” No. 11’2004, A. TIMOSHENKO, Feodosia