16/5/2016

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!

I came across a very busy rabbit while out doing a bird survey the other morning. She was collecting large mouthfuls of grass so as to create a nest at the bottom of a newly dug hole, called a “stop”. She will then line it with hair plucked from her own body.

RabbitDoe with nesting material

If conditions allow, rabbits will breed throughout the year and can produce a litter of 3-7 young (known as kittens) per month. The young kittens are born blind, deaf and almost hairless, unlike the young of Brown Hare which are born all singing and dancing and ready to go!

he kitten’s eyes open at around 10 days and by about day 16 they will start to venture out of the stop, and begin eating solid food. They are weaned by about 21-25 days old, by which time their mother will already have mated and be expecting another litter.

As for the young, well a male or buck rabbit can mate at 4 months old and does can become pregnant at just 3.5 months of age.

Rabbit RunningNow for a bit of fun (farmers turn away!). A clever mathematician sat down to work out that a single female rabbit will have 184,597,433,860 descendants in just seven years. Translated into words, that is - one hundred eighty-four billion, five hundred & ninety-seven million, four hundred & thirty-three thousand, eight hundred & sixty!!

OK farmers – you can turn back now! What the mathematician did not do of course is factor in all the different ways in which rabbits can come to an early death.

Many predators will regularly dine on rabbit, while Myxomatosis still takes its toll and large numbers get squished on our roads. If it wasn’t for these reasons along with many, many others, you can see that we would literally be knee deep in the little critters!

Despite all of this, I found myself secretly wishing my particular busy little doe, the best of luck as I went on my way.

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Comments

Rabbits

at 11:24 on 16/07/2016 by Frank Stevens

In 1964, aged 30, I was heavily into shooting and also loved rabbit stew. Myxxy introduction, just 10 miles or so from our farm, in Kent, was not asked for and most unwelcome - except for local farmers who stood to gain from the projected £millions that were said to be the reward. If any farmers gained millions they kept very quiet about it! Gradually the rabbits came back but after the heartache of despatching sick animals by the hundreds the appetite for them had vanished. In the 80s I was again shooting rabbits for a landowner who was establishing a new Wood and my Lab and myself enjoyed this sport in Dorset.

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