There are many reasons why you would want to attract rabbits. Predator control, rescue, or overpopulation? For whatever reason may be, here are how to attract rabbits.
How to Attract Rabbits Yard?
Attracting rabbits can be tricky. They are fast, agile, and extremely alert in the wild. Catching one with your bare hand is a very challenging task. With that said, there are many ways you can take to attract rabbits. One of the most successful ways you can attract them is by providing them with the essentials such as food, water, and shelter.
Providing them with their favorite food is the easiest way to attract rabbits. Like any animal, they will naturally gravitate toward the area where the food supply is abundant.
Although attracting them can be a less challenging task than you anticipated, there are many pros and cons when introducing a large number of animals in one area. However, if you are looking forward to eliminating them due to overpopulation or bringing them to rescue centers, here are some things you can do to attract rabbits.
1. Provide them with Rabbit Treats
Both domesticated and wild rabbits can be attracted to treats such as rabbit pellets. Since regular rabbit food is much milder in smell and taste, rabbit pellets are one of the best ways to attract rabbits to your yard. They have a pungent odor that a rabbit can detect from a longer distance.
It’s guaranteed that rabbits will surely hang around your yard once you scatter yummy treats around. Living a few bowls or spreading them to the ground are good options, as long as you ensure that the land is not an obstruction to anyone else.
Providing them with treats can also be a great way to catch them either for hunting or rescue. You can put a bowl filled with rabbit food inside a nest cage and trap the rabbit as it eats.
Besides rabbit pellets, there are many treats rabbits love. Fruits are also popular amongst animals, especially those with lower sugar, such as watermelon. However, they have a shorter lifespan, so leaving them exposed is not good.
2. Plant Favorite Rabbit Foods
Being herbivores, plants are one of the favorite foods that rabbits want to chew on. Although grass is their primary source of nutrients, rabbits are also known to snack on more tasty fruits, plants, and vegetables.
You do not need much effort in finding suitable plants for rabbits as they love to eat common farm plantings such as carrot leaves, cabbages, and lettuce. Rabbits are known as pests to farmlands as they eat farm produce.
So, if you want more rabbits in your yard, you can plant their favorite food to attract them. However, it’s recommended that you stick to fruits and vegetables with lower sugar content. Leafy greens such as cucumber leaves, bok choy, and cabbages are a great start.
Planting is much more significant and more sustainable in the long run than spreading or leaving rabbit pellets around. You can have a more consistent and less restrictive way of attracting rabbits with plants. They also do not produce odor or waster than pellets, so it’s a good substitute.
3. Provide a Clean Water Source
Clean and consistent water resource is hard to find in the wild. You can leave out shallow dishes so rabbits can freely drink to parch their thirstiness. Digging a hole in the yard can also be an excellent sustainable option.
However, it would be best if you kept an eye when serving the rabbits with water. Leaving it out for the long term can contaminate them and spread diseases among the animal population. It’s recommended to change the water daily or every other day.
You might think that small bodies of water such as ponds is great for rabbits, but the sentiment cannot be farther from the truth. Having more extensive and deeper bodies of water can be accident-prone.
As rabbits are susceptible to temperature changes, a rabbit can fall in the water and suffer from hypothermia or die in shock.
4. Provide Proper Shelter
Having a hutch or nests in the yard is a great way to attract rabbits. By providing them with proper shelter, the rabbits will have a better chance of sticking around. You can do many things in your yard to make them more appealing to rabbits.
Tallgrass is very well-liked by rabbits. It can hide them well and serve as camouflage if they need to run and hide away from predators. Tallgrass can also be a good source of food and nutrients.
Bushes and evergreens are also great as rabbits are prone to live in bushy and meadowlands. Rabbits are known to take shade in the thick leaves and plant for cover during hot and rainy days. It can also be a great hiding spot for predators.
5. Create Safe Place for Rabbits
Having their essentials and a hiding place in your yard is great for attracting the rabbit population. They might even make their nests in the yard once they acknowledge that the surrounding area is a sustainable and well-protected space.
Keeping them from predators is a great way to keep them in the yard. Although wild rabbits are untrained, they still have a keen sense of safety and alertness in their surroundings. Keeping your pets away, such as dogs and cats, can be helpful as the rabbits can interpret them as predators.
Unfortunately, dogs and cats do not get along with wild rabbits. Since the animal’s scent is unfamiliar, the domesticated pets will likely chase around and kill the rabbit. Keeping them apart is best for both animals as wild rabbits are also known to transfer viral and parasitic diseases to other animals.
Risks in Attracting Rabbits
Inviting any wild or unfamiliar animals to your yard can be a bad idea in the long run. For everyone to be safe, here are risks you need to keep in mind when attracting rabbits to your area.
Overpopulation
When rabbits are grown in population, they can be a pest. It’s estimated that if a single pair of rabbits are kept breeding unattended, the couple and its descendants can produce four million litter in just four years. Rapid breeding is one of the most common problems with rabbits, especially in the wild where there is no one maintaining their population.
By letting them near your place and providing them with food, water, and shelter, it’s no surprise that the rabbit population will increase in your area. If you wish to keep a few rabbits around, make sure that they are neutered before continuing to provide for them.
With the presence of rabbits, you might notice that they are not the only ones that will boom in population. More rabbits mean more food for other predatory animals. As stated, animals will most likely live where food is widely available.
Stray cats and dogs are known to go after rabbits as food, so you might also notice an increase in their population as the rabbits become widely available in the area.
Contamination of Disease
Rabbits are known carriers of many diseases. Unfortunately, most of them can be passed to other animals and even humans.
One of the most common is e. cuniculi, a viral disease found in seventy to fifty percent of rabbits in the United States. Even though most common rabbits will not show symptoms of the virus, many of them are asymptomatic carriers.
This particular virus is hazardous when introduced to an area. It is hard to cure and can be spread to other animals and humans. So, if you are planning to attract rabbits, keep these risks in mind.
Should you Attract Rabbits as Predator Control?
We get it, rabbits are adorable and cuddly, so most people do not want them to be in harm’s way. However, attracting them to your yard is not a very good idea in the long run. As stated in the section above, overpopulation is not suitable for animals and their surroundings.
It’s a far greater risk compared to the desired result. However, you can make a difference by knowing animal shelters or rabbit sanctuaries in the area. If you want to help the rabbit population in your area, it’s best to leave it to the professionals.
Rabbit rescuers from sanctuaries and animal shelters are more than capable of assisting with the rabbit’s needs and finding them a great home. So, if you caught a rabbit in your yard, give a local shelter a call.
You can also help rabbits and other animals by donating to the rescue center. Most of them need supplies, so they are most likely pleased and grateful for any among you can contribute.
Summary
There are many ways how to attract rabbits to your yard. You can do it by providing them with essentials such as water, food, and shelter. However, we must keep in mind that helping out ecosystems can have bad and good sides. It’s always better to get help from a professional.
