We often have rabbit damage from eastern cottontails. They eat leaves and thin canes. Not only will there be no leaves lying around, but the cuts are very clean.

This year I made a couple dozen hoops out of hardware cloth covered with green vinyl to protect roses from rabbits. It looks a lot better than galvanized wire.

This post was edited by zack_lau on Thu, May 15, 14 at 16:08

Oh yes, they will eat the leaves and strip the plant bare. You'll need some kind of fencing with small holes like zack_lau describes. They have a good chance of surviving, but try to get some fencing up fast!

Yep little rascals ate some of our smaller roses to the ground before... leaves and canes
So far all ours have survived the damage. I use wire fencing now for our younger roses...

Rabbits LOVE roses. Prickles have no effect on them. They'll eat any rose tissue they can get in their mouths. Rats and squirrels do exactly the same thing. All of their damage is identical. The "cuts" are perfect 45 degree angles. Rabbits will each whatever they can get to, including new basal breaks from well established, mature bushes. I permit the petty spurge "weeds" to grow around my roses because the rabbits seem repelled by them. None of the new growth originating in those weeds is touched. Much of what isn't protected by them is eaten. If you can put up a physical barrier to protect the plants, it works best. If you can't, good luck! Kim

Thank you all for the advice. In all my gardening years, I have never had rabbit damage on roses before. The fence goes up. I have one around my spinach and lettuce, so why not a rose?