Ah I loved this post so much. I'm a big fan of chooks (as we call them here). Can I suggest ACV and garlic in her water - it's sworn by to keep them healthy. Rosita looks like a real character. She definitely needs some friends! And wait til you eat your first egg .. amazing.
I can't say I can deal with rabbits at all. They are like a plague here. Fun fact - I live on the land that used to belong to Austin, who first introduced rabbits to Australia in the 1800s as part of his idiotic plan to europify Australia. They became an utter blight on the landscape - many graziers had to walk off their land as their were so many that they would eat the grass as soon as it grew and there was no feed for livestock, only dust bowls. Trappers earnt a better wage than working on cattle stations and for 100 years, being a rabbito was a solid job. 14 rabbits were used to make an Akubra hat π€ which was in high demand for two world wars for soldiers. Rabbit meat was a thing (no one eats it here).
The introduction of miximotosis was a godsend, and now it's the kalci virus. Now immunity is developing and they need a new one. It's our responsibility to get rabbits off our own land yet warrens can also be just over the fence line and the council are hopeless. I walk round my garden checking for warrens every day to kick them in it putting the hose down small holes that does lay babies in, putting a brick over the entrance to prevent another ten rabbits growing up. Sounds insane but it really is an awful problem.
However, if I see piles of poo - they seem to be random - I now know I can take some small solace in the fact at least their shit might be useful π
Thank you so much for the ACV/garlic suggestion. When the canal isn't running (creating a stream through the enclosure) we will be sure to add these things in her water bowl. Or even when it is running! It will be interesting to see which water she prefers. My money is on the 2nd Oct for that first egg. This is mother's 80th birthday.
Chooks is such a perfect name for them! Much better than chickens. Chook chook chook.
Your fun facts about rabbits in Australia really got me thinking yesterday and i will do my best now to transmit my thoughts. So, i know it must be difficult when they basically eat everything. Have seen first hand how they behave around our gardens (they escaped a few times) so i do understand how much they eat and how they love certain things very much. Baby corn and baby sunflowers for example were eaten whole. Even tomatoes had their stalks bitten right through at their base, for no apparent reason as they didn't eat the plant itself. Which was very testing for me!
We have a similar issue here with the wild pigs and rather like in Australia, the current solution is to kill as many of them as possible. At this time of year the hunting parties in the mountains can be heard every morning. Guns firing, dogs barking. It seems to me however that it is our responsibility as humans not to kill them but to find ways to co-exist with them.
A Russian lady in our village was having problems with pigeons last year, sitting on her gutters and crapping into her courtyard. So she looked at solutions and decided on a small electrical device which constantly emits a high pitch frequency they don't like. And guess what? This year there are zero pigeons around her home. So my first thought for you was this. A frequency based solution.
Rabbits have extremely good hearing and will detect high pitch frequencies from a mile away, making them perfect for this kind of deterrent. A farmer with lots of land would only have to place devices at one mile intervals around the perimeter of their land.
I looked online yesterday and it would seem that devices of this nature do exist but no big surprise, google was very good at making sure i saw all the negative publicity these devices have received. Don't forget, the agenda is to starve us, so they don't want us knowing these simple solutions. In addition, if the world at large were to learn how one frequency is good for one thing, they might start to ask questions about what all the other frequencies do. And this would lead to a ton of people buying frequency machines to heal their ailments. So not for one moment do i trust the way in which google pushed me to those negative reviews. And i would personally be investigating exactly which frequencies rabbits don't like. Then i would test out this frequency on a specific part of my land and see if it works. And if it did, i would invest in a bunch of devices to set up a perimeter around my land.
In addition i would personally do my best to catch some of those wild rabbits and put them in an enclosure. Once they are in a small area like the one we have, they really do poop in the same place every day. And this poop really is amazing. Somehow those magical little balls are able to inject life of all kinds to our compost which, as i mentioned, is super fantastic this year. Have seen side by side comparisons of plants grown in regular soil and plants grown in rabbit assisted compost and the difference is HUGE. Perhaps next year i will look to make one of these comparisons myself as i think it might help people see rabbits in a different light.
Sending hugs π»