After they are born, the kits spend their first month or two in the lodge. During this time, parents routinely clean out the young's "bedding", pushing out the decaying plants and bringing in new material. Beavers nurse for the first two or three months but can eat solid food within their first week and rely on their parents and older siblings to bring it to them. Eventually, beaver kits explore outside the lodge and forage on their own but may follow an older relative and cling to their tails. After their first year, young beavers participate in construction. Beavers are sexually mature at 1.5–3 years of age. They may leave their birth colonies at two years of age, but remain with their parents for an extra year or more during times of food shortage, high population density, or drought.