Rabbits
Cottontails clip stems off cleanly at a slant and gnaw the bark off the bottom of young trunks in winter. The damage stops at a level line about two feet up, the top of their reach.
Pest checklist
Four things to look for. If most of them match what you are holding, you are in the right place.
What gets rid of them
Gentlest option first. For most backyard cases the first one is enough, so try these in order and stop as soon as it works. If you do spray something, the product label tells you how — please read the notice further down.
1Hardware cloth cylinders on trunks
Wrap each young trunk in a cylinder of quarter-inch hardware cloth 18 to 24 inches tall, standing an inch or two off the bark, and set it high enough to clear expected snow.
1/4 inch hardware cloth rollTry this first2Fence the bed
A two-foot fence of one-inch mesh, pinned down or buried a couple of inches, keeps rabbits out of a garden or a row of shrubs.
1 inch mesh chicken wire fence3Take away the cover
Brush piles, tall grass and woodpiles at the edge of a planting are where they live. Clearing cover moves them along.
4Treat repellents as a stopgap
Taste repellents work for a while, wash off in rain and snow, and rabbits get used to them. Use them behind a fence, not instead of one.
rabbit repellent spray
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Which plants get rabbits
Every plant we cover that gets rabbits, grouped by type — tap any one to open its page. A note beside a plant came from that plant’s own entry, because the same pest can be a minor nuisance on one plant and a serious problem on another. Plenty of plants we do not cover get it too.
trees5
shrubs6
perennial1
annual1
Plant families hit hardest
Related plants often share the same problems, so if one plant in a family has it, check the others. The largest group here is Rosaceae, with 7 of the 13 affected plants.
- Rosaceae7 plants
When to treat
Put the guards on in fall, before the first snow. There is nothing worth spraying here, and by the time you find a girdled trunk in March the tree is already dead above the wound.
On specific plants
- Growing
- Slugs: iron phosphate bait or beer traps. Rabbits: fence — nothing else works.
Timing only — the label is the law
This page tells you when to watch for rabbits and when treating is worth considering. It is not a recommendation to apply any particular product. Read and follow the product label before you spray — under federal law the label is the legal instruction, and using a pesticide against it is illegal.
- Check the pre-harvest interval. Every product that’s cleared for an edible crop sets a minimum number of days between spraying and picking. Find it on the label before you spray anything you intend to eat.
- Check the re-entry interval before you or anyone else works in the treated area again, and use the protective equipment the label names.
- Confirm the product is registered for your crop in your state. This page groups many different crops together, and a product legal on one of them is not legal on all of them — state registrations differ too. Your state pesticide agency or local extension office can confirm both.
- Rates and mixing instructions come from the label, never from us. We don’t publish them because they differ by product and formulation.
Other problems on the same plants
If a plant gets rabbits, these are the problems it most often gets as well, so they are worth checking for while you are out there. They tend to appear together; one does not cause another.