How sweet of you to feed the bunnies ;) Many times there's a bunny nest nearby - check around and under your bushes. I don't know of any natural deterrant, I'd be interested to hear if there is something.

As a side note, we have major deer issues. Last week DH cracked up his brand new Sequoia when a deer ran into it (thank G-d he wasn't on his bike). Major, major damage!

On Friday, a deer ran in front of me on my way to work - I missed it by inches!

We're becoming nervous wrecks, lol

I just drove 45 miles back from my daughter's....dead deer all over the road,a t least 5 in that stretch....that comes out to one every 9 miles!

Blood meal liberally scattered will keep bunnies away....but you have to re-sprinkle after every rain. But the good news is that blood meal is cheap and the plants and flowers like it.
Linda C

You can make your own repellent:

1 empty plastic gallon jug
2 eggs
1 head of fresh garlic - cloves only, no husk
1 Tablespoon cayenne
1 Tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon dishwashing liquid

Put everything except the gallon jug in a blender and blend well. Pour the contents into the gallon jug and fill with water. Sit the jug outside in the sun to ferment for a few days. (although you can use it before it ferments)

Use a quart spray bottle to mist your plants. Respray every 10 days at first, then after a month, respray every 3 weeks.
For large areas, a pump sprayer would be ideal, but I don't know if the mixture would be too thick to go through the fine head of a pump sprayer.

Forgot: You could also get a beagle.

Ellen,

Two words: Liquid Fence. You can get it at the Home Despot or a garden Center. But be warned. The smell may make you gag.

Peppi

Or you can get a .22 and feed them lead.

Great ideas! Linda, since your recipe is the easiest(except the beagle LOL) will the water from our sprinklers dissipate the blood meal too or is that too little water? Since we're in the midst of a drought and on water restrictions, we'll be watering more heavily for the twice a week allowed watering periods.

Mustangs, animal rights activists are going to be all over you, or Peppi, a .22 and lead. (Probably the best tip ever.) LOL

My problem isn't bunnies, it is cats! How does liquid fence work on cats.

Ellen, my sister had the same problem. The rabbits ate everything she planted last year. It was a funny story of them telling of trying to eliminate them and I won't go into it here. They didn't use poison, but pretty close to the .22, real close.

Sounds like your living in the middle of the Wild Animal Park. Yikes. I am 12 miles from Philadelphia's City Hall and there are deer everywhere. The shoulder of the highways have a dead one every few miles. Yuck. I saw one just this afternoon in my Mom's yard.

Some of my neighbors have problems with groundhogs.

Squirrels, chipmunks, possum, raccoons all live happily in the city. Hawks and falcons have adjusted to city life , too.

Maybe a fence??

trixie, sorry that post was from me. i did not realize that Cathy was still signed in.

PETA can crawl all over me, I do not care. When rabbits destroy a crop, they need to go as they are out of control. Too many and you have the "pleasure" of watching them starve to death in the winter. I saw it a few years ago with deer in Cook Count and it is not pretty to see. Sorry. JMYHO.

"Squirrels, chipmunks, possum, raccoons all live happily in the city. Hawks and falcons have adjusted to city life , too" The same is true for Chicago, and you can add cayote and fox, along with skunks and a stray bobcat. We have taken thier land/feeding grounds but they face other perils here too. Don't take me wrong, I like them and will feed some of them, but a raccoon eating a hole in my roof is not an option.

Peppi

Fences we have, but they're not keeping out the critters. In fact a a few weeks ago we were dogsitting for DD & SIL and lo and behold a coyote came into the yard and attacked one of her small dogs. Luckily we interrupted the attack and he's now okay, but two chain link fences didn't stop him!

Peppi, the recipe I posted is essentially Liquid Fence, only LOTS cheaper.

Trixie, I don't think liquid fence works on cats, but they say coyote, fox, or bobcat urine does. You can buy it at specialty garden shops or on the web.

Blood meal will be washed off my sprinkling too... but it's so easy to just go out and toss some around. Much easier than mixing and spraying.
A few years back we were over run with bunnies...I went through about 15 pounds of blood meal every spring....but then a family of owls moved in about a block and a half away, and hatched a couple of babies....and fed those babies rabbits. I had no bunnies last 2 summers....this year I see an adult now and then in the waaay down in back, and I hear owls too at night....so I have hopes that the owls will keep any baby bunnies from fattening up on hosta and petunias.
Linda c

It is a tough life out there for the animals. I have been watching a hawk's nest on a web cam. The nest is in a very busy part of Philadelphia. The parents feed rats, mice and pigeons to the baby hawks(so far no baby bumble bees).

A coyote in the yard. Wow. So far I have not seen a coyote although I think they are out there, or on there way. That could be the answer to the bunny problem.

Mountain lions are on their way, too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Beast in the Garden

We have a lot of coyotes, some black bear, a zillion of those blasted rats on hooves (deer) and a fast growing turkey population, none of which seem to be impacted by the fact that we occasionally have a cougar sighting here.

Bunnies can procreate faster than predators can eat them. We're overrun with the little creatures in spite of the fox, the coyotes, the owls and several teenaged boys who hunt "small game" in preparation for deer season.

The "lead poisoning" is the fastest, most accurate solution, but most towns won't let you shoot a gun within the city limits. A live trap would work for the humane among us, but if you have one bunny, you have more and they all pretty much look the same. The WonderWeiner did his best, but Dad's big tomcat was the most efficient because a cat will hunt even when they aren't hungry.

I keep waiting for the bear to eat the deer and the coyotes to eat the turkeys and the owls to eat the rabbits, but it's not happening much here, we have huge populations of deer, turkey and rabbits.

Sigh. The rabbits like my garden, the deer my hay feeders and the turkeys make a heck of a mess of the bird feeders. They have the entire Manistee National Forest adjacent to the farm, but they like the easy meals. It's not loss of habitat, it's that they are opportunists.

Annie

Wild turkeys are not the same animal thery used to be when Ben Franklin wanted them to be out national bird. Not sure of all thed etails, but something like game farms raising them to shoot and have bred the "wild" out of them, and they escaped and bred with wild turkeys who became tamer.
The turkeys in certain areas of Iowa are still wary and wild, but there are a lot that strut their stuff in urban back yards.

I guess the coyotes don't have a taste for rabbit stew. A bigger bunny hopped through the back yard tonight as we watched through the french doors. We were eating dinner and he was enjoying munching on the grass. Grrr...

Ellen, I thought you'd find more. There's no such thing as one bunny. Gestation is only 28 days and they are of breeding age before 6 months old. At 6-10 babies per litter, that adds up. With just 6 babies surviving per litter and if half of them are females, you'll still have hundreds of bunnies in a year when you start with a single pair. Bunnies are always in heat, BTW, so always breedable. I had two females and one male and had over 100 rabbits in one year, which did not include those we sold and those we ate.

There's a reason for that saying "breed like rabbits".

Annie

OH NO!! The exterminator is coming by tomorrow with some type of spray that will make our lawn and flowers taste awful. I still haven't been to the garden center for the blood meal. You're making it sound like target practice which is strictly forbidden in city limits, will be our only alternative!

The cougars are one reason I'm afraid to go walking alone when I'm staying at my daughter's place on Vancouver Island, which is said to have the world's greatest concentration of cougars. Their country house is surrounded by dense forest and my DD has encountered a cougar nearby on two occasions when out walking with friends.

It's frustrating because the tall trees and forest are so inviting for walking and hiking but the fear of cougars keeps me moving around by car when I'm there.

SharonCb

A cat is probably the best if you get a hunter. Be prepared to be "gifted" with the bounty of the hunt. Electric fences work... there are flower bed fences! They also work on all kinds of varmits... bunnies won't eat, dogs won't dig, and kitty won't ruin the smell. You will probably be scared carpless first time a raccoon gets tangled in the fence... they are very vocal about expressing their displeasure.

Annie is right on about bunnies. They are ready to be a mom when only 80-90 days old themselves. They have a double horned uterus and can get pregnant on only one side independent of the other. Upshot is baby bunnies are possible every two weeks! At 12-15 days old baby bunnies can start to eat greens and by 21 days they are done with mom. I left the litters with the doe and rebred her 60 days after her litter. Meats would be culled between 70-85 days leaving an empty nest for the batch born 88-91 days starting the next cycle. Tracked them on a spreadsheet and have watched the litters being born... 8 babies in four minutes. I took a rest from working in the shed everyday year 'round and don't have rabbits anymore... : ( I do pile brush to attract wild rabbits and have $600 into a tack driving .22 for rabbits dinners during hunting season.

So anyways... DEER! Easy things you can do to avoid them. If you like loud music crank up the radio with the bass knob turned up. Hip-hop with a steady thump thump works best... I use my Nelly CD when driving fast at night when the deer are moving. Most modern rock or country music works as well. Other options are to slow down and use your horn when you see deer. Beep it three times fairly quickly. Short beeps allow a deer's hearing to calculate what direction you are going and how fast... turns your car into a roaring charging lion and they know to run the other way. Deer travel in a line! If one has crossed in front of you there may be up to 20 following behind. Baby deer follow mom even if you are blowing the horn. Plan on stopping for the parade. Durn things... I stood on the back porch screaming at them and shooting them with a bb gun and they won't get out of my garden.

: )
lyra

Bunnies are cute but you can't be nice to them. They are eating machines. I can't tell you how many times I've shouted "Death to Bunnies!" in my yard/garden. Well, this morning when I went out in the backyard there was a bunny butt in the edge of my walkway. Just the back part, a tail and about one and a half legs. Looked like something had bit it in two. Kinda creepy. I guess the gods are giving my my wish, but I sure would like to know how that happened in my chainlink fenced in yard in an urban row house neighborhood. Could possibly be crow or hawk, but I dunno. It seems like it would have taken something rather large to chop off the front part of a bunny's body. I'm wondering what depraved beasts we have around here in downtown Allentown!

The bunnies are the ones that can get between the holes in my chainlink. Once they grow up to rabbit size the fence keeps them out. This is the time of year I curse them. It's not going to be too much fun getting rid of that bunny butt though. It was gruesome but also mysterious and kinda sicko funny. I have seen neighborhood hawks disemboweling rabbits on some of the finest lawns in the neighborhood, but that's up the road a piece.

I once fenced a nest of bunnies into my little garden patch with the broccoli and the Romain. I wondered why things were continuing to be eaten when I had fenced so well....then I discovered 3 bunnies about 5 inches long hiding under the tomatoes!

I live in downtown Atlanta, and have been overrun with rabbits for a few years. When we drive into our backyard at night, both of my daughters start chanting, "Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit!" It's been better this year because one of the hawks finally discovered them. Unfortunately, she's now eyeing my chickens. I'm fencing the garden.

Our other big varmit problem is squirrels. One neighbor trapped 23 last fall, and things are much improved. We also have lots of opossums and chipmunks, who don't seem to eat anything I care about. A few years ago, animal control had to remove a young black bear in our neighborhood, right on the shoulder of I-20. Welcome to the urban jungle.