Top rabbit foods include bluegrass, Korean lespedeza, crabgrass, clovers, wheat, corn, and milo.
A diverse assemblage of plant species and structure benefits many wildlife species. Disk strips through sods and heavy grass cover (on the contour in hilly country) to allow annual weeds to grow. Plant food plots and strip-diskįood plots, both grain and green browse, can be added if the area is suitable. Top larger sprouts to create both loose and dense brush piles. These usually provide excellent nesting sites and cover for rabbits, quail and other wildlife. Most farms have odd or non-agricultural areas, which have been allowed to grow sprouts, briars and brush. This slows erosion and promotes brush growth, improving the gully’s value for rabbits and other wildlife. To create rabbit-friendly cover, “chop and drop” fenceline trees, letting their crowns lie in place. This is especially valuable during heavy snow. They allow rabbits to enter bordering fields and then return to safety, and they furnish winter food, permitting rabbits to feed without leaving shelter. If fencerows include dense, shrubby cover (and not just tall trees that harbor predators), they can make excellent wildlife habitat. Pile up limbs from firewood and timber harvest to provide additional escape cover. This increases the woodlot’s timber value and, by letting the grasses and shrubs come in naturally, provides cover and food for rabbits and other wildlife. Improve Existing Cover Fence pastured woodlots Read the tall fescue control page for more information. This invasive, nonnative grass crowds out more beneficial grasses, weeds and wildflowers rabbits need to survive.
#Wild rabbit predators free
Large tracts of single-species crops free of fencerows and field buffers eliminate rabbit cover.
Unnecessary mowingįrequent mowing of waterways, field borders, and odd areas reduces cover, promotes undesirable species, and even kills adult and young rabbits. Threats to Rabbit Habitat Continuous grazingĪllowing livestock to graze the same pasture all year, year after year, will eliminate the food and cover rabbits need to survive. A source of water during hot, dry spells.A safe place for nesting and development of their young.
Your rabbit-management plan should include as many of the following habitat needs as you can provide: Solitary animals that they are, Banfield (1974) says that the young will only stick together for the first 7 weeks before heading off alone.Provide high plant diversity and heavy cover. By this time, their mother is probably pregnant again and will soon be ready to give birth once more. Within about two weeks of being born the young are ready to leave the nest. However, I have seen quite a few young, evidence of successful breeding. At the FWG I have not found any such nests, but then I rarely look for them, not wishing to disrupt the animals. These nests are well concealed under shrubs or tall grass but can be very vulnerable to disturbance from dogs and humans. While it is thought that they could live up to 7 years under ideal conditions, most rabbits, not surprisingly, don’t make it past their first year and many, according to Forsyth (1985) live no longer than 6 months.Īfter a short gestation period, averaging 30 days according to Banfield (1974), females give birth in a shallow nest or “scrape,” hollowed out of the ground and lined with vegetation and fur from her belly (Forsyth 1985, Banfield 1974). Females will breed when they are only 3 months old therefore, it is easy to see how populations could explode if there were no checks. The female may produce 3 to 5 litters a year with an average of 5 young per litter, but many newborns do not survive.
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