Melanie Read from Newsroom was down in Otago doing an in depth report on rabbits. Along with George the camera man, they were all over the place, even down to Southland.
Below are the links to the series of items they did. Very interesting! All the people need to realize that it isn’t just an Otago problem but is cropping up all over the country.
Action from central government is ZERO!! But they have proved how incompetent they are when it comes to all the pest control, but what would you expect from a bunch of fools as successive governments have proven themselves to be.
Earlier this year I got the below email, it made my week! Enjoy the read…
Hi there, My name is Adym and I live in Taranaki. I work for an organisation who rescue and take on kittens that are unwanted. I received a call yesterday that someone had rescued a ‘kitten’ from being drowned. I agreed to take the kitten but once I received it I have seen that I’m pretty sure it’s a ferret. I have been feeding him on Royal Canin kitten milk and he seems to be quite strong. I was wondering if I could donate him to you? I will gladly take care of him until he is older and I will also desex him for you as I have many vet friends who have already agreed to desex him. I will also drive him too you once he is ready also.I don’t want to euthanise him if you can take him on and give him a loving home with an awesome job. I have added a photo to show how young he is.
Feel free to call me if you wanted too on XXXXXXXXXX. Kind regards,Adym
Well of course after getting this email I rang him for a yarn. Adym was going to drive over 2000km and a couple of ferry crossings to drop it off. I let him know that legally he could keep it but I was happy to take it if he wanted. Below are updates…
Hey there, I thought that I would give you an update on how the ferret is going. Firstly you are correct in the fact that I would keep him. He is definitely now apart of the family.I was feeding his every two hours even during the night and now he is the coolest dude ever!I’m super happy that he made it.He is healthy and eating properly and is toilet trained (nearly). He gets a whole room to himself during the day when I’m at work and is obsessed with stealing socks. So I guess now I have a pet ferret haha. Hope you had a good Christmas and a happy new year. Kind Regards,Adym
Very cool!Plenty of people overseas let their ferrets sleep in the sock draw. Get his nuts out July/August.Email me mid winter and I’ll try and get some rabbits up to you to feed him. It’s a lot cooler then so easily doable.
Cheers Stephen
Awesome!! Thank you so much! And yeah I’ve found a vet who will do it for me so that’s lucky! Here is an updated photos of the little man… mid belly rubs
We’ve gotten real flash at Kill That Rabbit LTD, we now have a maternity wing at camp. Fly is on the left with a litter of little rabbiting dogs at foot, Jess is on the right expecting a litter later this month.
Fly’s had pups! Very cute pups they are as well, Levi the whippet is the father……. not that he cares 😀 Both the parents are such good natured dogs and great hunters of the rabbits these should be real crackers!
The second person to see them was all over the runt, half a tail and half the size of the rest. I normally keep the runt of the litter myself but she was so all over him/her (I haven’t checked yet) I might cave. To soft….
It seems playing is way more fun for some today instead of rabbiting. Well ok, it is the end of the day and we’re in Queenstown waiting on the ferret to come out.
This wee cute (Dingo) had her first day at work rabbiting today, well ok, she slept in the Ute. But she came for a drive to Wanaka while we killed rabbits!
Well there is a lot going on in the rabbiters life at the moment including lots of rabbits to be dealt to around Otago. In fact it seems to be the same story in many parts of New Zealand! Rabbits everywhere I go (And a few Wallabies around the place as well) plus all the rabbits in other areas people are telling me about.
Got the new longnet going the other day, so nice having a good setup again. It just makes life easy.
New longnets
Wolf had pups, the father is Arthur who is now with another rabbiter. She had 3 but one was born dead which was a shame, two wee girls survived. I’m keeping one and the last I heard the other is going to a neighbour which is cool. They got a couple of spare ferrets off us not long ago so this pup will round out their rabbiting team nicely. Their kids are young and all over this rabbiting gig.
The one we are keeping has been named Dingo.
Dingo’s first photo
Got the rabbit netting manufacturers down next week so the yarn up with them will be interesting, hopefully we can get some major improvements happening which is sounding really good. Fencing being the very first step in a good control plan it will be nice to get a better product to put up.
Just got the knew trailer painted last weekend, purpose built as it was taking me two trips to get to jobs, and of course two more to get home. You get over that real fast!
This comes as a surprise to most people, but no the rabbiting dogs don’t live on rabbits for their dinner. Don’t get me wrong, they do love a feed of it. Especially at the moment as the snackpacks are here (very young rabbits) The dogs just grab and go!
The reason is very straight forward, they can’t live on them as they don’t contain enough fat. If you want to go on a crash diet then get into the rabbit meat but be warned, we can’t survive on it.
I started the dogs on Mighty Mix a few months ago and they are doing very well on it. We’re giving them the frozen concentrate, feeding the usual way for us which is into a bucket and help themselves whenever they want.
Mighty Mix
Wolf the little guts is the only one overweight but she’s just had a litter of pups so not to worried about that. For now.
They have also spent time on the nourish biscuits and did well on them. Was looking after a pigdog pack (What a pain in the arse they were) and managed to get them looking really good on the large dog biscuits and dogrolls. They were skin and bones when they got here and looked bloody good when they left.
Price wise it seems to be working out slightly cheaper, a bag of frozen lasting about 9 days. On the other brands I would go through two bags for the same time frame which equates to an absolute minimum of $120 IF you can get it on special, which often you can’t.
So far very happy with it. I must get a bag of the treats they have and see what the dogs think of them….
