Rabbit population

[Sirblessed 2,511]

I cover a lot of ground, and get the opportunity to see a variety of areas at different stages of resilience.

 Let me try to explain, the first year an area experiences any variant of RHD, it is it’s most effective year, every subsequent year it becomes less and less effective, so much so that the need for variants of the currently used variety need to be introduced to have any effect at all, that being said, it is still just a mutated variant of the original strain, to which they have already obtained a certain amount of increasing resilience and in some areas completely immune, from what I can see it’s just a matter of time before they are completely immune and some areas already are.

[jetro 5,349]

Thing is here where I live sirblessed is there is no farming on a large scale what so ever. The biggest farm would be 10 to 15 head of cattle max.

This place is very rual and wild. Unlike where big farms are under attack from rabbits for grazing or arable growing, its understandable why these strains of diseases are used to control the populations.

I cannot see anyone releasing infected rabbit's here. 

That why I can't figure out the sudden drop in numbers.

Atb j

[toolebox 1,569]

19 hours ago, Sirblessed said:

I cover a lot of ground, and get the opportunity to see a variety of areas at different stages of resilience.

 Let me try to explain, the first year an area experiences any variant of RHD, it is it’s most effective year, every subsequent year it becomes less and less effective, so much so that the need for variants of the currently used variety need to be introduced to have any effect at all, that being said, it is still just a mutated variant of the original strain, to which they have already obtained a certain amount of increasing resilience and in some areas completely immune, from what I can see it’s just a matter of time before they are completely immune and some areas already are.

The new strain K5 as its being called is set to be released in march this year  in NZ but we have been warned best knock down result will be  30/40%.The remaining 60% will start to breed kits that will be unaffected by k5 so the cycle begins again . This is a far cry from the results of the RHD release about twenty years ago when it blew down 90% of the rabbit population.At this present time due to a number of dry winters we now have a  huge population of rabbits  that have grown immunity levels in the high 90%.Rabbits can now be seen sitting out in high numbers from most main roads . 

Edited January 11, 2018 by toolebox

[The one 8,511]

There's a few good pockets of rabbits but there in hot areas or areas you would get into trouble ferreting them , there's a double roundabout here must be 50 on it and at the side of the vets another  20   in our public park there's always a good few  between the park hedge and the dual carriageway 

[Jerry71 269]

In my ares they was loades of young bunnies running every were in spring early summer and by late summer not a bunny to be seen on some land that normally holds good numbers. They got mixy and then rhd wich wiped them out. If we loose the humble rabbit it will have a devastating affect on wildlife, let's hope the rabbits can come back from this virus as it really don't look good, atb