A RABBIT BOARD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 June 1938, Page 9

A RABBIT BOARD

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —I understand some members of the Farmers’ Union want to start a Rabbit Board. I take it those members are failures with their own rabbits, and would wish to be members of the board to control other farmers’ rabbits. We have mostly had some 50 years’ practical knowledge of the rabbit, and if we have not learnt every habit they have, we have not looked after our job. He is about the most curious animal on earth; therefore the easiest to destroy, and for any farmer to say he can’t keep down his rabbits —he should be ashamed of himself and his management. Bunny will never be caught sitting on a soft cushion. One has to go to where bunny lives to catch him, and as that can’t be done on a cushion it is not done at all. Fancy a practical farmer, with his sheep, set in a critical time of the year, perhaps short of feed, and a board’s rabbiter comes along and wants to work certain paddocks of his own choosing and to use any means he chooses —in other words, is the farmer to manage his farm or the board’s rabbiter? As far as I can see about the whole job is that some Farmers’ Union members that prefer the cushion to work want other farmers who keep their rabbits in check to pay for keeping theirs down —in other words for their pleasure. I have got as rough and scrubby rabbit country as the next. But I don't allow bunny to manage me. Neither am I allowing some board rabbiter to manage my farm.—Yours, etc., A. H. TINKHAM.