SUCCESSFUL RABBIT DESTRUCTION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3104, 9 June 1881, Page 4

SUCCESSFUL RABBIT DESTRUCTION.

The Werribce correspondent of the -Melbourne Weekly Times writes:—"During the last month, on some of the stations between Melbourne and Geelong, carrots and arsenic have been employed for rabbit poisoning, ank very satisfactory results have been obtained. At "Werribce Park, Mount Bothwcll, and Wooloomanata, pliosphorisecl oats have received a fair trial, but the greater efficacy of carrots and arsenic is so marked that no hesitation is felt in giving this method the preference. Some of the landed proprietors arc proving the strength of their convictions in a thoroughly practical way, by cultivating a few acres of carrots next summer, and high and well-grounded hopes are entertained that a sure method of exterminating the pest has at last been hit upon. Whether or not the carrots will attract the rabbits when the grass is green is very uncertain, and can only be determined by experiment. Up to the present, however, they aye being used in Wooloomanata, and seem to prove as fatal as they did a month ago. The modus operandi is exceedingly simple. Two or three bags of carrots are emptied into a long narrow trough, and chopped with a sharp spade into pieces a little larger than marbles. From the trough they are transferred in buckets to large boxes in a cart or other vehicle, or thrown into the vehicle itself. The weight of a certain quantity is ascertained, and arsenic is sprinkled over the carrots and stirred thoroughly through them in the proportion of lib to 251b, strict accuracy being unnecessary. They are ready for laying out at once, and may be deposited in places inaccessible to stock, such as in rocky crevices, in the mouths of burrows, under brash and stone fences, &c. A safe plan is to clear a particular paddock of stock until the rabbits in it have been poisoned; but in many cases the carrots have been thinly and carelessly strewed upon the grass in paddocks where slieephave been depasturing at the same time, and no deaths of sheep have been traced to the poison. Small home made scoops are found very convenient in distributing the carrots."—MiThomas Skene, a Geelong sheep farmer who has been experimenting with arsenic and carrots, says he has laid it openly all over the run with the sheep in the paddocks as usual, and never lost one by it. Mr Skene's directions are :—" Quantities, lib arsenic to 201b carrots. Pound tho carrots up with a light rammer, not into a pulp, but into small ' pieces about the size of peas, beans, and . marbles. Do not handle them either before or after mixing, as the rabbits have a very keen sense of smell, and will not take them so freely if they have been handled. When a sufficient quantity is broken up ready for mixing, weigh 201b of the carrots and spread them in a layer over the bottom of a box, and dust lib of dry arsenic powder all over them; then mix thoroughly with a large iron spoon or spade, rubbing them well together. Any one mixing can see when the arsenic is sufficiently mixed, with the carrots. A ilb pepper tin with holes punched in the lid makes a very good dredger for dusting on the arsenic with, and just holds abciit lib. _ Use d, spoon in laying the mixture- out, put it on any bare ground around t\ie burrows, or in old stone wails is a very good place. Th© rabbits take it after it becomes quite dry with the sun, bub best when fresh, bteeping in arsenic water i s not nearly so effective : the rabbits do not take it so freely, and the carrot does not take a sufficient quantity of the poison to make it so deadly."