Do small beaver tails work fine for BTO? I saw a buyer that only wanted tails if they were a certain minimum size. It made me wonder if the small tails don't work very well. Maybe he was was buying the tails for something else like wallets, he didn't say.

more fat on big beaver tails small ones just need to be a bit bigger like a year bigger for fat build up

they will work just not as well or yield much

Considering the work involved cutting them up, small tails are a near waste of time.

gotta agree with that ....almost a Waste of Time

Don't know about down south,but here there is much more fat on the tail of a fall\winter beaver than there is on a spring/summer beaver.

From experience the small tails make a thin oil that does have the strong premieating smell the big one produce. I do mix them in with big one if nothing else to help increase volume! The very best oil in my opinion comes from those 2" thick tails! its strong and theres lots of it!

I bought some BTO recently because I wanted to try some and was a little shocked at the price. I guess I was expecting the cost to be similar to cost of good sun rendered fish oil. Do the tails yield such a low volume of oil to justify it to be so pricey? I like the odor of it but am going to test it besides some spoonbill oil and see if works good enough to justify the cost of it. BTO @ $4 ounce / spoonbill oil $0.70 ounce if I buy a gallon.

It takes a lot of tails and quite some time to come up with a gallon of BTO. I have 3 of those 4.3 gallon sheet rock plaster pails going, and 2 have been going on 3 years. In not too long of a time, in my green house, they will sink/render down to 2/3s of a pail and that's starting plumb full. I don't know if I have a gallon yet. But I wouldn't quit my day job to make tail oil .

this was the first spring I didn't add 4 gallons to my rendering rack ive still got 9 gallons going from previous years I will be lucky if I draw 1/2 a gallon this year! Yes sir why aren't you rendering your own? its one of the simpliest things to make! lol if me and les can do it anyone can!But as les stated it will take a few hundred tails to achive one gallon in a summer. I try to draw a gallon a summer! I was slacking this spring to many other irons in the fire12 gallons of spoonbill rendering instead

Tony
Reason I bought some instead of making it is because I've never caught a beaver in my life and we're not over run with them like in some places. I figured it was easier just to order a little bit and test it before i decided to figure out how to get some tails and make my own.
Les and Tony thank you for your input on how much oil to expect when rendering tails.