Who is crazy to want more wild rabbits milling about in their garden? Me.
By garden, I mean the frozen patch under snow and ice that isn't exactly producing growies this time of year. A little while ago I was taking notice of how the snow really points out all the evidence of cottontails in the area: tracks,stripped apple tree prunings, urine spots, poo pellets...Poo pellets everywhere! They are ammending my garden for me! I also occasionally live trap them, because as some of us out there know, they are quite delicious. I harvest them and yet the poo continues to deposit itself on the garden.
Now, I also raise domestic rabbits for meat on a small scale, and I must admit, I am rather terrible at it. My animal husbandry skills are abysmal and the amount of energy that I have put into them is several orders of magnitude greater than anything I have ever gotten out of it. With a fraction of the feed I use on domestics, I believe I could "direct" the wild population to key areas to better harness all that wild manure, and draw them to my trap for more consistent meat harvesting. Perhaps, I could abandon my domestics altogether and repurpose the rabbitry for something more productive...a greenhouse perhaps.
Has anyone else successfully harnessed this resource that otherwise is considered a scourge by most other gardeners?