Beaver herds cattle: in Canada!

April 21, 2017 • 2:30 pm

Ed Kroc sent this curious video taken in Ituna Saskatchewan and reported by the Regina Leader Post:

Adrienne Ivey and her husband Aaron were out checking their 150 cattle near Ituna on Good Friday when they noticed something odd.

The cattle were gathered together and walking slowly behind a beaver, with some of the heifers lowering their heads to get a closer look at the furry cowboy with a funny-looking tail.

When the beaver stopped, the herd would stop, and then follow again when the rodent resumed its stroll.

Ivey says they are used to herding their cows with horses or quads, but nothing like this.

Indeed:

Now of course the beaver isn’t herding anything on purpose, and Adrienne’s explanation is probably the right one:

She says young cattle are naturally curious, while the beaver seemed to ignore all the attention.

“We knew that people would get a great chuckle out of it because you cannot get more Canadian than that,” said Ivey, who posted a video of the beaver-bovine cattle drive on Facebook.

“We talk about how awesome our Canadian beef is, but a beaver leading cattle around? It’s the most Canadian thing ever!”

Ivey said the beaver was probably looking around the pasture for a place to build a dam.

20 thoughts on “Beaver herds cattle: in Canada!”

  1. How wonderful.
    It’s things like this that make me realise life is truly worth living.
    Go beavers!

  3. We used to live in a house with access via a track through a field in which cattle were often kept. On one occasion we missed our son of eighteen months. Somewhat frantic, we found him 100 metres down the track facing a herd of cattle that were behaving just like those in the video. Naturally, we rushed down to “rescue” him, but he was not frightened, and the cattle were merely curious.

  4. I sure would like people to learn to turn their phones to the horizontal when making videos. /petpeeve

  5. Great video! Never seen an animal herd from the front instead of the back of the herd, but this guy is doing it successfully so I guess it doesn’t matter how the job gets done.

  8. We had a brief invasion of beaver in our local area which is pretty built up suburbs. They chopped dozens of trees along streams over a summer and then disappeared. I’m thinking the local authorities trapped them out to the boondocks.

  11. I think(hypothesise, since it is science day!)the beaver was trying to find a way home over open territory and came across the herd by accident. It continued to advance quietly accepting the odd sniff from the cattle while hoping the herd would not do what herds can do: stampede. Definitely not leading.
    A similar curiosity of cattle is how TB is transferred to milking cows in New Zealand. TB infected possums (furry like beavers) behave drunkenly in paddocks and transfer TB to curious cattle, unfortunately for the farmer. Healthy possums stay in the forest.

  12. I hope the beaver escaped, as this is quite a dangerous situation for any animal that has attracted the attention of cows.

  14. Not surprised that it takes that many cattle to get a beaver to go anywhere – pretty stubborn, them beavers!

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