Bummed About Rabbits
- Thread starter Loyalist Dave
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No, use the hay to feed and bed your rabbitry rabbits. It's all about efficiency and economy. Additional wasted rabbit feed that winds up in the pen cleanings will feed and attract wild rabbits when you compost it. Then the compost makes the worlds best fertilizer, and you get a supply of both tame and wild rabbits. Will also boost your deer activity, and other animals. Rabbits love sweet all stock feed.
It's not easy. The bucks tend to sit out in spring. They can be territorial so occasionally fights or skirmishes can be witnessed.
Their heads tend to bigger, a does tends to be slender. A spring doe can have enlarged abdomens and look busy eating to produce milk.
A rabbit chasing another rabbit is usually a buck.
Hay Stacks. Alfalfa. All that I have been around always have cotton- tail in and around them.
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Yes Britsmoothy how do you tell the bucks from the does, are the English rabbits different from the American ones. I know this past Oct. while hunting antelope in Wyoming and after successfully harvesting a Antelope we went Jackalope hunting but all we seen were does, not a horn in the bunch.
The jackalope is a completely different animal. They have canine teeth and often form packs that attack anything or anyone! On their own they lie in wait and use their powerful back legs to launch them selves to their victims neck.
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Predators are problem here, yotes and foxes, the last few years we are seeing more eagles and red tails too. The community thins the yotes and foxes every other year, tan or sell the fur and keeps what bob cats we have happy.
One of the worst things for rabbits is the common mouser cat, especially feral ones. Old fluffy is responsible for more rabbit and turkey extinctions than predators, in my opinion.
One of the worst things for rabbits is the common mouser cat, especially feral ones. Old fluffy is responsible for more rabbit and turkey extinctions than predators, in my opinion.
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Plenty of snowshoe hare up here. Plenty of fox as well.
Yesterday afternoon, 4 ish, on my way home from Quebec we had a bobcat cross right in front of us. That was only 3 miles from my farm. I have yet to see them when they leave tracks right outside in the front yard.
Seems to be enough bunnies for all.
Yesterday afternoon, 4 ish, on my way home from Quebec we had a bobcat cross right in front of us. That was only 3 miles from my farm. I have yet to see them when they leave tracks right outside in the front yard.
Seems to be enough bunnies for all.
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Well Brit we had the correct medicine for them if we came across any!
hanshi
Cannon
Here in Maine the snowshoes don't take any sass from coyotes/foxes or bobcats.
WELL THAT explains the Monty Python and The Holy Grail "bunny scene"...It was a jackalope that they misidentified as a "rabbit". I thought that as a documentary the movie was quite well done both in historic accuracy and visual detail, except for the "rabbit"...now that such is explained, I will give the movie that final fifth star!
LD
bore_butter
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back in the 50's here in Kentucky the government had a program called Soil Bank. the farmers were paid not to grow hay or the like and in their hay fields they were to plant #31 fescue, cut it and leave it lay. after a short period the once thriving rabbit population dwindled to near zero. they found that the fescue was cutting the stomach and other parts of the young rabbits. kill off the young and you have that kind of results.
Where I live in PA we have some of the best snowshoe habitat in the state. People from al over the state come here to run their hounds on them. The problem that I have is the thick brush. the brush is so thick that you can't see them take off most of the time. A few years back the state had a contractor come in here with a couple of D9's to open up the brush. Since then it has come back with a vengeance. Hard enough to walk thru let alone spot them.
Here in Maine the snowshoes don't take any sass from coyotes/foxes or bobcats.
That's not right. I will never look at the Easter Rabbit the same way anymore.
The jackalope is a completely different animal. They have canine teeth and often form packs that attack anything or anyone! On their own they lie in wait and use their powerful back legs to launch them selves to their victims neck.
All BS aside, how do you tell the bucks from the does, out here they all look the same intill you knock one over. Forget my post just read what you said a few post ago on how to tell them apart.
I was thinking the same thing.
From what I remember of hunting MD in the late 90"s was the number of red fox that I saw, they were everywhere even in the day time. They would sure would put a hurting on the bunny population. Someone else here posted feral cats, That's my experience growing up on a farm in central PA in the 70's and 80's it was the norm to kill a limit of 6 rabbits in a morning. I started to see cats around the farm not around the buildings but out in the fields, people were dropping unwanted pet off on farms thinking that farmers wanted cats around the barn. I don't know for sure if the cats were killing adult rabbits, but I do know that they will wipe out every litter in the nests that they find. I counted 13 cats one day on our 100 acre farm and no more rabbits. When the cats disappeared it was too late, by then the predator population exploded in pa, coyote showed up for the first time and between them,the hawks, eagles, owl, red and grey fox the rabbits never rebounded. you'll see an occasional rabbit around the yard but no sustainable hunting population.
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Hanshi, must be a doe no horns, what say you Britsmoothy.
Absolutely, the females are definitely the worse ( and don't I know it!).
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