This industrious little rodent can cause alot of damage in a little time. Well known for their burrowing activities, they drain ponds and cause many dollars of damage to dams and dikes.
The muskrat likes to live in marshes, ponds, lakes and slow moving streams where there is plenty to eat. There they will burrow into banks or construct housing and feeding lodges if the habitat permits.When they burrow into a bank for a home, the entrances are underwater and slope upward into the bank into a chamber or den which is filled with dry nesting materials. The lodges look like little beaver lodges and are made of smaller sticks, mud and grass. There are usually several entrances underwater to the main living area inside. Food "huts" are built in the same manner but are filled with different grasses and roots so the muskrats can eat at their leisure.
Muskrats are primarily vegetarians and like to feed on different aqautic plants. They prefer cattails, rushes, arrowhead, plantain and pond weed. They also dig up and eat the roots of the different plants found in their habitat. Snails, crayfish, fish, frogs and carrion are not turned down, however.
Usually a nocturnal animal, the muskrat is not sociable except when with a mate or when they share a communal den in the winter. Females have two litters per year, usually in May and August. The kits can swim even before their eyes are open. They disperse in the fall.
The muskrat is a favorite of just about every predator, especially the mink. Muskrats carry Giardia, leptospirosis and can also carry rabies.
Suggested trap sizes: 1 long spring, 110 or 120 conibear.
Suggested sets: pocket sets, floating platform sets, conibears in their travel ways.