Damn rabbits!

FWIW, I found spraying the vegies with fish emulsion fertilizer (diluted) would keep most rodents from eating anything; deer too. Problem with it is you must redo it after any rains, and unless you are fond of anchovies people aren’t crazy about it eiither…

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Clematis! They bite my clematis - don’t eat it, just bite thru the stem.

Bite the flower heads off the dianthus, ruin the spiderwort. For once, they left the Empress Wu hosta alone.

Saw one this morning grazing in my new prairie garden - I figure prairies are meant to survive grazing by rabbits, but there used to be a single sunflower bloom …

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While I was covering with net my new Romance series cherries and buying more netting - rabbits totally ate my 11 blueberry shrubs to the roots, that garden bed is totally flat now. They finished them in just one night

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Time to get out the crock pot Lena.

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I told my husband that I really want now rabbit stew

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Also for anyone dealing with rabbits/rodents, I found these super sized bait bars online that should work well for rabbits. Fit well inside a 4" sewer pipe to keep larger animals from accessing them.



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I’d be concerned that poisoned rabbits would harm owls.

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Its a possibility I suppose, this is blood thinner poison so its less harmful than some of the other types, if ingested by a predator. I read online somewhere that to be dangerous for a cat sized animal, the cat would need to eat 10 or more mice that were killed with blood thinner poison, in a short interval, which is unlikely. I have found mice before that I poisoned with a more lethal type of poison, but the blood thinner stuff I think is slower acting and animals usually die in a secluded area or underground.

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I was joking about rabbit’s stew, I cannot harm an animal. I just protect the trees and bushes from rabbits with a net. I would rather spend some money and effort for that, but let the animals live. I live here, but they also live here, it is their home too. Winter time they come to our door and wait for us, hoping we give them something to eat.

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if you lose enough trees/bushes to the little buggers you might change your mind. I dont wish to harm them, but I cannot physically protect hundreds of plants every year, so they gotta go.

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I’m surprised so many people don’t eat them. So many good recipes and it’s not a strong flavored meat, more like chicken breast.

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the problem is in most suburbs all these gardens and fruit cause these animals to overpopulate. there arent as many predators to keep the population in check. we need to keep them in check. prior to the farming of northern Maine, we had very few deer. they exploded as the farmers cleared the land and grew crops, giving them much more food than the woods would give them. back then everyone hunted so it kept the animal populations in check. the same places that have the most damage to gardens and fruit trees also have no hunting allowed or people that want to protect the animals which is exactly the opposite that needs to be done. it will only get worse for these places over time.

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we have that problem in Bismarck, north and south of town are too populated to rifle hunt and there are too many deer. They have a ‘herd reduction’ bow hunt every year, but only allow does to be killed. One year I shot 7, but bow hunting is time consuming and finding land to hunt on is hard also. Many people either ‘like the deer’ or dont want their neighbors to be mad at them for allowing them to be shot…

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I can imagine. We only had 3 rabbits, now only 2 left. These 2 still don’t let my bush raspberry to get established, they keep eating newly transplanted bushes. I need more netting around. Soon the whole yard will be only netting :slight_smile:

@randyks

If i never eat another rabbit in my life i ate to many. When i was a kid i shot 2 a day most of the winter time for my family. In a pinch i would go back to eating 2 a day all winter.

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Rabbits arent too hard to snare in the winter, they follow the same trails in the snow consistently. Ive found its best to get them where they go undre something like a fence, often those holes are too small for cats or dogs, so you wont accidently catch the neighbors cat in your snare.

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you guys have jacks or cottontail there? we only have snowshoe hare here and they are pretty gamey.

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Recipes for hare to overcome the gamey taste compared to mild cottontail.

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@steveb4

Cottontail at this time. They got rid of the jack rabbits during the dust bowl.

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tree rat version

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