How to stop rabbits from eating your plants

With many options out there, how do we know what is needed to protect new plantings of native grasses, flax and shrubs against rabbits?

If you are a landowner in an area inhabited by rabbits, these notorious predators will cause irreparable damage and cost you time, money and great deal of frustration!

The amount of damage it will inflict can be detrimental to your entire investment for the planting season and in this case, prevention is always better than the cure.

Rabbits can affect your property in a number of ways. The two most common problems are:

1. Competing with livestock for pasture by eating the best grass. On average, 7-10 rabbits consume as much as one ewe.
2. Causing extensive land damage and erosion from burrowing and stripping vegetation, making farmland useless.

They will target almost any type of fresh vegetation and particularly enjoy eating your newly planted natives and specimen trees.

Past Control Efforts

Since the introduction of rabbits in the early 1800’s there has been a number of major plagues in New Zealand with devastating results for landowners. Many landowners were bankrupted in the early years due to forced stock reductions and large areas of farmland were abandoned. The government tried many ways to control rabbits including trapping, poisoning, shooting, erecting rabbit fencing, introducing predators and viral diseases. A lot of these efforts had some success, but it is fair to say that rabbit elimination seems impossible to many frustrated farmers and landowners

Eating Habits

Rabbits tend to follow pretty reliable meal schedules. For the most part, they eat first thing in the morning at daybreak and then again right in the beginning of the evening. In saying that, many of our customers who have been stuck home with Covid restrictions have noticed them enjoying the repast during the day as well!

Rabbits are quite choosy with their eating. They’re usually much more enthusiastic about consuming foliage than stems, for example. They also prefer to eat new plants whenever possible. Dry plants are not a priority for them. Their menus differ slightly depending on the season. In the coldest times of the year, they eat lots of green vegetation, woody shoots, tree bark, conifer needles and buds. In the spring and summer, they turn to agricultural crops, flowers, grasses and clovers.

Control Options

There are really only two things you can do with rabbits eating plants. You can either:

1. Exterminate them (expensive and time consuming, although funding assistance is sometimes available), or;
2. Keep them at bay from your new plants while they get established (less expensive).

Click on our PlantGuard comparison chart makes it an quick and easy decision!