|
 ...warren ripping and fumigation
 Farmers
vs rabbits Hunting Poisoned
baits Rabbit
pie
 The
rabbits preferred burrowing in the light sandy soils and loam of good
cropping and pasture paddocks. Huge colonies of rabbits dug out warrens
to the depth of about 1.5 metres. They made the paddocks useless for crops,
as they caved in if trucks or tractors were driven over them.
Les McNaboe recalls: "They took over all the land, the rabbits. Practically
everywhere you went there was rabbits. They made the good ground dangerous
- I've had that many spills off horses that I couldn't count, through
them falling into rabbit burrows."
Warren ripping was a common method of ridding the land of rabbits.
A horse, tractor or truck would pull a plough over the warren to expose
and destroy the network of tunnels.
"On the light land, we used a crawler tractor to drive on top of
the warrens and spin the tractor around. In the hot dry weather the sand
used to go down and suffocate them. It was very successful, but it was
a dusty old job," explains Les McNaboe.
|
|
Angus Forsyth speaks about a local council
initiative to eradicate rabbits.
|
Rabbit eradication worked best if farmers cooperated with their neighbours
and carried out their control programs at the same time.
|
|
Les McNaboe speaks about the danger of
using larvacide poison to fumigate rabbit warrens.
|
Fumigation was another commonly used technique.
The entrances to a rabbit warren would be blocked with soil, and poisonous
gas would be pumped in. There were many poisons and hand or foot-operated
pumps available to make the job easier.
Lyn Broad recalls: "Some farmers, with a small burrow,
would just use their vehicle and carbon monoxide - just leave a vehicle
idling nearby with a hosepipe from the exhaust into the warren. Of course,
that gas is heavy, and it would settle into the bottom of the burrow.
That was reasonably effective."
|
