"John Hutchison" wrote in message
...
Hello All,
The border furthest from the house is constantly being used as a walk-in
restaurant by the local rabbit population, and I'm nearly driven to
despair
by the tenacity of the little beggers. I have seen them destroy two
snip

I hesitate to suggest this but one technique to repel sharks from beaches is
to weigh a dead shark on the sea floor. Maybe stringing up one dead rabbit
on your boundary for a few days would give the remaining rabbits the
message? I guess this would be more acceptable in rural areas than in your
typical modern housing development :-)

I've also seen a hose rigged up to a PIR ( Passive Infrared sensor) which
sprayed whatever walked in front of it.

Similar to Rod's suggestion for a cage around plants, an upturned wire
hanging basket may look nicer if you don't want chicken wire all around your
garden.

No one's suggested chilli sauce sprayed on plants. I know birds aren't
affected by chillies but as far as I know rabbits would be.

Are you sure they're coming to eat the plants? We used to have pet rabbits
that would bite things down to the ground just because they were in the way
of the runs they naturally maintain as escape routes. Maybe your new house
has been built on top of an old rabbit run? If so they'll kill plants that
they wouldn't normally touch.

Our pet rabbit used to regularly jump a 3ft fence so we had to put an extra
2ft of wire on top to stop it escaping. They'll also tunnel under fences so
if you do put up a fence, be prepared to attach buried chicken wire to it.
Nail it to the bottom of the fence, then down a foot and another foot
horizontally out in the direction the rabbits approach. Then they get to the
fence, dig down and hit the chicken wire. Unless they're smart enough to
start digging a couple of feet away from the fence, they'll never get
through.

Finally, Warwick is probably right about nobody enforcing the rules as long
as you're reasonable about things. I'm on a new development with all sorts
of silly rules such as not having satellite dishes on the front or sides of
the houses but everyone has them anyway. I think a lot of the rules are just
to keep the development looking nice and open/uniform while they try and
sell the remaining houses.

Martin