Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi All,

over the last couple of years our allotment in Derbyshire has become over-run with rabbits. Most plotholders have at considerable expense fenced in their plots to avoid everything being eaten.

Measurs have been taken to try to reduce the population all to no avail. Two weeks ago myxomatosis was spotted and since then I have myself seen several rabbits with the disease.

Is this disease spreading across the Country or are we here an isolated patch.


Thanks

Tracie

I think it comes and goes like flu epidemics and can be quite local. A friend from the next valley came the other day and I was complaining about the rabbits, he said they didn't have many because of myxomatosis. I'll have to go and get a body and infect the warren in the field next door!

I hope it is an isolated patch. It's a horrible way to die even for a lettuce chomping rabbit. I used to see dozens of dying rabbits in the late 50s and early 60s up in the lake district.

Cheers, Tony

I've lived here for fourteen years now, and regularly seen rabbits with myxmoatosis over that time. It doesn't seem to have had any adverse effect on their population in this area.

There is a very large rabbit population in the area where I do most of my dog walking. It is mixed agricultural (normally maize), meadow, water meadow and mixed woodland. Perfect for bunnies. It seems that every other year or so there is a massive increase in population quickly followed by large infection of myxomatosis. It is a horrible disease, I agree, but it does appear to keep the numbers down to reasonable levels. My daughter was absolutely inconsolable when, the other day, our dog caught a badly myxied baby bunny, she (dog) didn't kill it but brought it to me. If my daughter had not been with me, or so upset, I would have dealt with it on the spot. Having been brought up in the country in the sixties I am all too familiar with the nasty disease. We used to collect infected rabbits on our way home from school and take them to our farmer neighbour to dispatch. He told me many years later how he hated doing it.

A pest is a pest however cute and fluffy. I shoot tree rats.

Being cute and fluffy they do not deserve to die a very lingering death so I shoot them and eat them. No Myxi around here for many years. With tree rats I just shoot them along with Magpies and leave them to nature.
JB.

Female friend/distant-neighbour was agonising on facebook this week about how to get help for a distressed baby squirrel found on het lawn.

She has three un-neutered cats, one of which had kittens earlier this year.

Reconcile?

Hi Peter,
Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind!
JB.