Keep Your Eyes Open for Baby Rabbits

Baby rabbits look cute, don’t they? Their tiny noses, little tails and general all-round appeal all adds up to a lovely image – a sign of Spring, if you like.

Unless, of course, you happen to find them in your garden, where they can do a lot of damage. From March onwards, you can expect lots of baby rabbits to make themselves known. You can go through the winter months and not see a single rabbit or have it cause problems in your garden. And suddenly, there you are one morning, watching in dismay as lots of baby rabbits appear, chomping their way through your plants and grass.

There’s no doubt that the cuteness of baby rabbits is directly related to where you see them. If they appear anywhere else but your garden, they’ll look cute. However, once they take over your lawn and flowerbeds, you’ll find yourself wishing they would just go away. The amount of damage they can cause is quite alarming – and it can be costly, too.

There are easy methods you can use to deter them. For example, they hate the smell of onions. If you can plant some of these around your garden, it should help keep them away. Of course, it’s not practical to plant the perimeter with onions, so other methods would also have to be employed.

A good example is to erect a chicken wire fence around the perimeter. This needs to be partially-buried in the ground – ideally to a depth of 12 inches. Don’t skimp, otherwise your hard work will be for nothing. Aim for 30-inches in height and use existing fencing to staple it into place. In this way, you shouldn’t actually have to see the chicken wire, but you know it will be there doing its job. You can always hide it with plants if need be. There are plants that rabbits seem to hate. Alyssum (which re-seeds) and marigolds are two examples of these.

If you should find an abandoned burrow in your garden, be sure to fill it in. You don’t want to offer up a brand-new home for these baby rabbits – one they don’t even need to build themselves.

If you try all this and you still have problems, be sure to call in a professional in pest control. They can assess the situation and propose other solutions as well.