In *real life* farming woes

I know at least a few of you get your hands well dirty in the course of your normal day. Just gotta vent for a couple of minutes. Apparently the local rabbits have chewed the bark from all of my trees these past couple of weeks!! I may lose all eight. I'm utterly heartsick.

 

So sorry gaura! Here is a solution - get some wire mesh, the type with 1/4 inch square spaces, and make a cylinder of the mesh about 20 inches high to go around a tree. That should protect the tree trunks from rabbits standing up on hind legs. Don't put the mesh right against the trunk though, but about 3 - 4 inches away from trunk. You can use zip ties to form the mesh into the cylinders.

It's a bit time consuming to make this for several trees, but it will work. I do hope your trees will recover.

 

Good suggestion Willow I had to do the same thing (used hardware cloth and zipties around the base of all of my new fruit trees), because I have tons of little hungry wild jack rabbits (which I call beavers with big tall ears, lol) all over my 10 acres

 

We're thinking ours may be toast-- will evaluate tomorrow when we're all here to discuss. We WILL be caging either these or the replacements. We too have jackrabbits and I'm wondering-- this damage is pretty recent and I really haven't seen jacks on the property all winter, so if we had a pair move in on the cottontails, that might be it.

 

Oh I feel your pain... I also have the same problems... Keep planting new trees for shade for my reindeer and the B rabbits are stripping the bark off sapplings. Have live traps but am just catching 50% tame rabbits that have been released by irresponsible owners and live traps are only catching about once every 2 weeks - just cannot keep up with rabbit breeding .

 

Don't ya WISH we could hand them in to the FS in real life ?

 

I didnt know they ate the bark...here they just eat all my vegetables!!!

 

elimeno - Maybe they needed more fiber in their diet?

gaura - My family are almond farmers in RL. I asked my Dad how they dealt with this problem. He said habenero sauce(hot sauce)...the hotter the better. They sponge it on the base of the new trees and all the varmits hate it! Can you imagine all those rabbits scampering around saying....."I need water!!""chips....where are the chips??".

 

Brookeham...LOL>...well once my garden starts to grow I will need help///I even put out the Irish Spring Soap...didnt work

 

My spaniels tend to keep the rabbits by us at bay to a certain extent. I make great casseroles these days .

 

the rabbits are definitely out,,,almost lost an arm when the beagles noticed it on our walks...last year the mother decided to give birth ....dont know what its called for rabbits...anyway the hole was 10 feet from the dogs side of the yard....any we catch are yours for rabbit soup

 

You may be able to help your trees survive by performing a, "bridge graft",. To see how to do it go on the internet and they will give you complete instructions on how to do it, but if the rabbits chewed the bark off all the way around the tree there probably isn't much hope of saving it. Good luck.
Fried rabbit with biscuits and gravy makes a delicious meal. Hmm mm!

 

I feel your pain. Vermin....grrr.

Best way I found as I love trees more than thumper <bunny in movie> as said above dogs. If you don't want dawgs of this type go to hunting groups all puppy lover's have a group and get together s and seek out the vermin killers, the weasel breeders are good to find exterminator raisers for rats, for those with rats and kids, no poison and them little guys love the job.
I see just a month after breeding season is good, they be more fun for the dog, they like em with a little meat and the parents seem a tad slower, at ease so once a year is good to hire.
I was lucky, I had my little nanna dog never had a puppyhood, she was 40 right off. Everything had it's place and she made sure of it!
Also the good thing about hiring exterminators is they be trained to bring bunny back, then you can save money by bleeding them and drying the blood on plastic wrap, Blood sells in stores for bunny and deer, apply around tree/crop and they go away, washes away after rain, but free is ok for time between hire of dogs.
For me no waste as I used meat in dog food with deer but another bonus is selling jerky for puppies the same groups you sought out will buy the jerky.

 

Wow Ming! you sure have that problem down pat. Nothing goes to waste. As for hot sauce it works great for chewing puppies. They love to chew on the kitchen cabinet corners until you put hot sauce on them.

 

The majority of my vermin problems are rats. I've got a brother that has designed and built some ingenious rat bait dispensers though using PVC pipe. The rats tunnel in from the hay field into the chicken yard and there are times that you can step on what you think is solid ground and have it give way under you due to the rat tunnels. Normally you wouldn't be able to put bait out cause you would end up killing the chickens as well.

With the dispensers though only the rats can get into them and they can't get the bait out. They are weighted so the chickens can't knock them over. We've had a massive decrease in the rat population since we've started using them.

I do also have a couple of rogue chickens that refuse to stay in the chicken yard. Now they have done some damage to my vegetable garden mostly just the collard greens though. I've got to catch them and clip their wings but man are they fast and refuse to be lured.

I've used the hot sauce method btw especially for chewing puppies. It also works on cats as I had one that liked to chew power cords and a little Tabasco put an end to that.

 

Very clever answer to the vermin problem LDCrow!

My worst problem is an exploding deer population in my neighborhood. There are about three separate herds, I think. One night I counted 22 deer in my yard and the two next door neighbors' yards. We have a lot of wooded areas despite the many houses and businesses.

Solution: Last week I had a 6 foot fence put around my backyard. Nice to walk outside and have no deer poop and chewed plants! One of my neighbors has decided to do the same now, after losing several young trees to the deer.

 

I tried vary hard to do it natural except for insects I fully believe in if you don't pay rent and not family nuke em!

 

This is really not a woe unless you consider the extra work it involves I guess. I got my special deliver this morning with my spring chickens. They are barely 24 hours old and so cute. It's a box of chickens!

 

So unbelievably cute!!! Thanks for sharing! Welcome back!

 

Like most baby animals they are absolutely cute as can be, but it's amazing how much noise something so little and so cute can make.