Anyone got any good ideas on how to repel the pesky wabbits from my garden? Not so much because they eat stuff, 'cos we don't have that kind of garden, but because they dig holes in *everything*, including a (split) tonne bag of sharp sand, the 5 tonnes of chipped bark piled in the orchard and various flower beds, banks and verges.
Personally, I suggested an ounce of lead shot doing 1000 fps or .22 rimfire, followed by appropriate preparation & stewing, but SWMBO isn't keen.
Large, hungry cats?
Sheila
They killed too many birds.
Why?
Mary
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If anyone knows I would be delighted. I have a big problem, tried shooting and trapping, but they still come back. Bring on the foxes! ;_) The only cure I have found is fencing, it works, but it also keeps out all the other beneficials, such as toads, frogs, hedgehogs. With nature I reckon you can't win, I netted my caulies last year against pigeons and cats, kept them off but was wonderful for mice!
No, I wondered why the lady wife wasn't keen.
They will, Mother Nature knows best innit? That is, she would if rabbits were native here ...
That won't work either.
That's true. Just stop worrying about it and treat them as free meat. If it weren't rabbits it could be something worse. Like deer.
LOL! Spouse made some chicken netting 'hurdle' modules for my veg plots, to keep off the hens. The unexpected benefit was that they also keep out cats and even wood pigeons, collar doves and rock doves (feral pigeons), the plots are small enough for larger birds not to get in or out easily. I wouldn't be without them.
Rats and mice don't seem interested but the hurdles don't keep out slugs and cabbage whites :-(
Mary
Mary
My neighbour, the game keeper, feeds them to his dogs :-)
Rick
including a
Borrow a terrier dog or two of some bread or other, I know that West Highland terriers will clear rabbits prompto, well ours did....
One dog entered some undergrowth, about 50 odd rabbits came out - followed by said dog !
SWMBO isn't keen.
Nah, far to much like hard work, Terriers will love the chance to do what come to them naturally, and even if they don't actually kill any their sent-trail will scare off the rabbits for some time (although you might need to borrow the dogs more than once to start with).
Too bad. The cats around my place seem to have little, if any, interest in birds - but they do a great job on furry things.
Sheila
Well in the case of the former it's not that nice having to pick shot out of your stew... Would you be doing the skinning and gutting or would you only do the "macho" shooty bit?
More to the ppoint unless you want to eat rabbit every day of the week you'll never keep 'em down by taking the odd one or two.
Physical barrier is the only real way to keep 'em out. Depending on how determined your rabbits are you might not have to go the whole hog of 2" galv wire mesh buried 18" down projecting 12" forward (out of the protected area) and 3' above the ground...
I used to be a biologist. Dissecting stuff is just like butchery, only prettier.
Bugger. We'd need about 500 yards of that.
Hopefully your rabbits won't be that determined to gain access. Do they already know that is is possible to dig under a fence for instance? If they don't just dropping the mesh and the bottom strainer wire a few inches below ground might suffice or backing the bottom with a row of bricks or blocks so they can't "nose under".
Fence it.
Rabbits are as native as anything else.
The whle country was free of all organic life under a sheet of ice just
10,000 years ago.How the rest got here is by many means. Carried in cages by Normans being just one of the many..
.22 rim fire is not shot. Its one slug and generally passes right through.
Skinning and gutting is a cinch compared with plucking and drawing a pheasant. One sharp knife, a quick tug and the skin is off. Slit up the belly and shake the squirmy bits out and its ready for jointing...
Make it a daily routine then.
standard rabbit wire. Not expensive, although the posts that you hold it to are... BTW froggs can hop through, and hedgehodgs should not be cleared from inisde.
If you have that size of garden get a dog. The rabbits will be disinclined to come where he has pissed.
Although they can burrow under, mostly they don't, and the ones that do generally can be picked off with an air rifle.
A rabbit is not a creature with a well developed intellect: It mostly stays near a safe haven, and eats, only wandering further afield if it's hungry, or wants a locally unavailable shag.
Making an area a bit more difficult than the alternative is generally all it takes.
They aren't totally dumb though and do have a memory. Once a rabbit has found it can dig under things it will continue to do so. Of course it meets with high velocity lead shortly afterwards it won't remember but others may use the hole or follow the soft soil.
Rabbits aren't brain dead, pheasants are.
By the way it is not necessary to bury the wire, just install it in an L with the bottom 150mm simply resting on the ground. Of course if your land is like mine that is not even necessary as the rabbits cannot dig into it, its so hard and stony! :-(
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