Rabbit eradication
- Thread starter nanoboy
- Start date
import foxes....oh wait
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
That would be great behavioural enrichment!
Hix
The keepers mentioned that rabbits sometimes wander into the cheetah enclosure, but they don't make it back out - alive that is. So some mornings they have to clear rabbit carcasses from the enclosure before visitors arrive.
Shooting the rabbits with a silencer sounds like a good idea (and Monty would love to do the job, I am sure
), but there were so many of them - like plague proportions - that I wonder how effective that method would be. I understand that foxes and feral cats help, but they do not discriminate between pests and native wildlife. One of the guides explained that they are trying to get rid of the foxes, cats, and rabbits before they reintroduce Eastern Barred Bandicoots - they have had success with the foxes and the cats, but not with the rabbits. I was just wondering how farms or wildlife parks or other zoos approached the rabbit problem.
Due to Calici and Myxo rabbit population boom and bust. I have a lot of rabbits at the moment, but expect Myxo or Calaci to go through soon as it does several times a year. Winter reduces insect numbers which seems to always cause a rise in numbers and spring always sees a crash.
We once got pet rabbits for the kids and tried keeping them in mozzie proof pens to avoid the diseases. We were surprised when 2 died of Calici and the others survived for another month before they got Myxo.
Another year we were given Rabbits by someone who did not want them. Myxo got them after about 2 months.
The only time my kids had a rabbit last, was when I caught a wild one. It actually go Myxo symptoms and recovered and never got Calici. I think the kids had that one 2 years before they let it escape, to breed a line of super rabbits immune from everything.
to breed a line of super rabbits immune from everything.
Not immune from a high velocity projectile though.
Hix
I remember the same being said about the lion exhibit at Monarto on my last visit a year or two ago.
and as said earlier just about any wild dog exhibit anywhere.i was told the onlt thing that can survive in a wild dog exhibit for any extended time is probably an echidna.