As I finished milking the other evening, I noticed a cottontail rabbit eating grass. That was a bit unusual, but I have no barn cat right now.
This rabbit didn’t concern me until it calmly hopped over to my garden fence. My garden is fenced with two by four welded wire. The rabbit slipped through and into the garden.
My garden does not need a hungry rabbit. I charged in. The rabbit left.
Raising Rabbits
Never confuse a cottontail rabbit with a domestic rabbit. All the domestic rabbit breeds trace back to European rabbits. None trace back to the native rabbits.
Years ago I had a commercial rabbitry. Even more years before that my family raised rabbits. They make good pets and good dinner.
My commercial rabbitry had around a hundred does divided into eight sections. Each week one section got bred, another section got nesting boxes and another had their little ones weaned.
Does did move between sections from time to time for various reasons so they were mixed up. My father came up with a great system to keep track of them.
I bought clothes pins. They were painted red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, black and white. One side was all colored, the other half. They were clipped to the feeders.
When I walked down the aisles, the clothes pins told me which section the doe was in. If she was bred, the half side was out. If she had babies, the full side showed.
Cottontail Rabbit
Chicken wire got stretched across over the garden fence. That seemed to work as nothing seemed to get eaten.
The number of rabbits eating the grass kept increasing. Four were there one morning. I got nervous.
Then the few beets still in the garden got eaten. Was it the rabbits? If it was, the rabbits had gone around the garden to the far side. Then again, I’d seen a chipmunk zip out the fence there and they eat gardens too.
Chicken wire is going up around the garden fence and on the gates. The rabbits and chipmunks can eat outside the garden.