What was in the paint- did you include joint compound?

I'm using plastic spirals which is working, and I've got an epidemic of rabbits. The question is, how high will the snow go? The trees need to be protected a foot above that. Also, will they begin to girdle my peach trees and older plums? So far only young plums, younger apples and pears have needed protection.

If you bury the chicken wire even a few inches I haven't had a problem with rabbits burrowing under here.

Spirals take less time than foil and amleonard has a pretty good price on them.

Corrugated plastic pipe works for me. It comes in 8 ft. sections and can be cut to size and is easily removable.
But don't use it for peach trees, as borers can hide behind it.

Without rabbit protection my dwarf apple, peach, plum and blueberry would be damaged heavily. I cut 3 foot plastic fencing into sections large enough to wrap around the trees and secure with cable ties. This works well so long as the fencing goes clear to the ground. The 3 foot height gives protection that remains intact for the typical snows here. Material cost is about 50 cents per tree which I'm sure would be less if purchased in bulk. Labor for me is a few minutes per tree. With 1500 trees to deal with this labor issue may make this approach prohibitive unless you were able to streamline the method to make it faster. Another drawback is aesthetics, which can be improved with choice of fence, but probably is not a concern of yours anyway.
This has really made rabbits otherwise a non-issue in my orchard.

This post was edited by creekweb on Thu, Jan 29, 15 at 11:33

With that size, metal wires are the way to go. Just make sure the fence is strong and bury it a few inches in the ground. You may also want to anchor the wire fence.

chickenwire was too short and flimsy for me, especially with big snow drifts, so I got this to protect my little trees. holes are bigger though at 2x2", but nothing but small rabbit could fit through that, which isn't around in winter. I also have cats that help some, trap them, shoot, whatever is needed to eliminate them. I have rows of thousands of willows not protected by fence and don't have much damage there anymore now that I control the population.

Trap them, shoot them or wrap with hardware cloth. Ive been dealing with rabbits here for years. I get rid of a few and more just move back in... Hardware cloth has been very helpful. One issue i run into is deep snow..it allows the rabbits to feed higher on the tree.

I shoot rabbits I find in my cherry bushes. I had several ferral cats that I kept around but they really didn't seem to afect the rabbit population. I would look at what habitat the rabbits are living in. The less brush and hiding places rabbits have the more natural predators can help control the population.

Orchardace I fully understand a Kansas rabbits abilities to avoid hunters, chew through paint, walk on snow etc. Through the years they have taught me a new vocabulary just used for them because of the damage they cause. They travel in groups and in a single night can devastate a new orchard. Paint the tree trunks with pruning seal or tar because they hate it. The trees I got from you I painted the trunks with pruning seal. One tree they jumped several feet up and cropped the top 2 inches and other than that no problems so far. Right now they are on their best behavior but when it snows be ready because they have nothing else to eat. Try cutting down some elms and leave them on the ground as a peace offering. They girdle the elm tree saplings here and then I cut them down and let them eat the tops. I let lots of new elm trees grow to keep them busy and then cut the elms down in the summer and let them come back from the roots. Like with birds give them an alternate food source. I also have owls, hawks, coyotes, bobcats , feral cats etc I protect at all costs. I don't kill snakes unless they cause a lot of problems because they eat rats, mice etc. The bread basket is also notorious for its rodent population.

Btw last year I turned out 6 hunters on them and they all together got 1 rabbit. They each saw 5+ rabbits. Predators are taught a few lessons by Kansas cottontails. The owls do the most damage because as you pressure the rabbits they go nocturnal when people can't hunt them. The owls are better hunters anyway. If you have high poles, trees etc. You give the owls a real advantage that they will use. Every few years the rabbits population naturally gets to large and a disease will kill most of them and the cycle starts over.

Orchardace...Like Harvestman...I'm curious to know if you mixed in the drywall joint compound? I'm both surprised and unsurprised that they chewed the painted trunks.

The only damage I had last year was also on M26. Seems like they have a particular fondness for it and I've heard this same thing from others.

Looks like the paint has worked, at least not totally girdled, ..if you didn't, they would have done allot more damage. To make it better, add some Thiram fungicide into the paint.

Clark, yours mirrors my experience exactly. I hadn't heard it was disease that caused the reductions, always assumed it was just a predator-prey cycle. Every night I hear coyotes I pray they make it to my property. After I killed a few with my shotgun they went completely nocturnal, in spite of very cold nights.

Applenut, I bet M26 has a relatively high content of protein compared to other rootstocks. I also wish we'd gotten a response about whether joint compound was in the mix. I'm trying to determine how affective it is. If only M26 is being eaten the rabbits aren't quite desperate yet.

Harvestman,
The old timers always told me to not eat the rabbits on years like this because the cold weather has not killed off the diseased ones suffering from illness such as what they called rabbit fever. The jack rabbits were once a problem in eastern Kansas. I think some diseases were introduced to try and control their population. Jack rabbits were rounded up and killed to save farmers crops. Cottontails populations are way up now. Disease will be rampant this year with no lengthy cold weather. The population will explode because more rabbits with disease survived the winter and the disease will explode with the population. If next winter is cold and the majority are diseased the population will be wiped out accept for a few isolated rabbits.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rabbit drives

Jack rabbits were rounded up in western Kansas is what I meant to say not eastern.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rabbit drives