Summer is a time when most families are out and about enjoying time in their gardens, swimming, playing ball and barbecuing with family and friends. It is a great time to be outdoors and making the most of your garden. Summer is also mowing season and if you want a beautifully manicured lawn that is always neat and tidy, you need to get out the lawnmower and cut your lawn once or twice a week. But be careful, those dead patches of lawn that drive you crazy may not be dead patches at all, they could be rabbit nests.
Be on the Lookout for Rabbit’s Nests when you Mow your Lawn
Lawn mowers are potentially lethal for baby rabbits. When babies are very small the mower might pass over the nest without causing any harm but as the babies grow, the mower can easily damage the nest, frighten or even kill or injure young rabbits.
To avoid damaging or destroying a rabbit’s nest, the best thing to do is to check your lawn before you even start mowing by looking for telltale patches of dry grass. As you are mowing, keep your eyes on the ground and if you see a patch of dead grass, stop and carefully peel it back to look for baby rabbits that could be nesting underneath.
If you find a nest, avoid handling the babies or disturbing them in anyway. If the baby rabbits look fat and healthy and are wriggling around, they are fine, the mother will be back to feed them in the evening. But if the babies look weak, lethargic and thin, it’s a possibility that the mother is no longer coming back to the nest and you need to call in a wildlife removal expert to rescue the babies. Don’t try to do this yourself as you could end up stressing the babies and hand rearing baby rabbits is a job that is best left to the experts.
Carefully Mark any Rabbit’s Nests on Your Lawn
If you have identified a nest of healthy baby rabbits on your lawn, leave it alone. Simply mark the nest and avoid the area around it with your mower. The best option is to leave a six-foot area of uncut grass surrounding the nest.
Rabbits grow quickly so they won’t be around for very long, typically they leave the nest in about three weeks. You can then quickly and easily repair the damage to your lawn and mow the area around the abandoned nest. But remember, just because one nest has been vacated does not mean that there won’t be more nests. Rabbit breeding season stretches from the beginning of spring to the end of summer, so you constantly need to be on the lookout.
One way to mark a rabbit’s nest and keep kids and pets away is to cover the nest with a plastic container. Just be sure to cut a hole in the container so that the mother rabbit can come and go from the nest and check on her babies as often as she needs to.
Mother Rabbits don’t Just Abandon their Babies in the Nest
Maybe you haven’t seen a rabbit in your garden for a while, so you think that the nest has been abandoned. Think again. Just because the mother rabbit is nowhere to be seen, does not mean that there isn’t an entire family of baby rabbits wriggling around underneath that patch of dry grass. Mother rabbits do not stay close to their nest’s day and night. They usually only go to their nests twice a day, typically in the mornings and evenings, to check on their babies and feed them. The rest of the time the mother rabbit will be out and about foraging and making sure that she does not reveal her nest to any potential predators. Just because you do not see the mother rabbit hanging around your home, does not mean that she has abandoned her nest and left her babies to fend for themselves.
Discourage Rabbits from Raiding your Garden
If are tired of sharing your lawn/garden with pesky rabbits that dig up your bulbs, eat your plants, build a nest and are generally a nuisance then you need to make it less attractive to them. There are a number of ways to do this. You may be able to keep rabbits out of your vegetable patch by planting onions, garlic, red peppers and other strong smelling plants in amongst your favourite veggies. You can also buy commercial products that are produced to repel rabbits.
The best way to keep rabbits out of your garden and away from your precious bulbs and delicious homegrown vegetables is to use physical barriers. But remember that rabbits are good at digging so you need to bury a section of the fence underground for it to be an effective deterrent. You can also try growing your vegetables and bulbs in raised boxes.
If you don’t want rabbits making their nests on your lawn, then you need to keep your grass nice and short from the beginning of spring so that you don’t inadvertently provide a convenient nesting site for a mother rabbit.
Conservation is the Name of the Game for Skedaddle
Always remember that wildlife control and removal is a job for the experts and if you find a rabbit nest on your lawn and you think that it may have been abandoned or you know that something has happened to the mother rabbit then you need to contact your wildlife control expert immediately. They will know how to inspect the nest without being too disruptive and they will be able to tell if the baby rabbits are healthy or if they need to be removed from the nest.
Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control has been in the business of conserving urban wildlife for many years and we are passionate about saving our animals and teaching homeowners how to conserve and enjoy the wildlife in their garden. We can quickly and easily teach you how to look for rabbit nests in your yard and how to mark and protect the nests from mowers, curious kids and pets.
Contact Skedaddle Wildlife Control for all your wildlife control and removal needs. Big or small, we can help you conserve the wildlife living in your backyard and solve any of your wildlife-related problems.
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