gregcincy
10-05-2002, 03:23 PM
Ok guys found this excerpt from an article in Indiana Game and Fish Mag. Here is the link.
http://gameandfish.about.com/library/weekly/aa081702b.htm
My question is, is it really that simple to increase the cottontails on your farm by just throwing out several chunks of a salt block in thick cover? Has anyone else heard of this? Seems pretty easy to me.
What do you guys think?
JANUARY
Rabbits
Glendale FWA
Who'd have thought the key to having a successful rabbit season was as simple as "putting a little salt on the rabbit's tail." That's not exactly the truth, but "salt" management is boosting rabbit populations on many FWAs across Indiana, and it has been particularly successful at Glendale FWA.
Several years ago, wildlife research done at Purdue University found that a lack of sodium in the diet of rabbits could have a negative affect on their "fecundity." Fecundity is the term biologists use to describe the ability of a species to produce offspring. Basically, the research showed that cottontails with low sodium levels don't "breed like rabbits" and that introducing sodium to the environment in a manner rabbits would use made the rabbits healthier.
Common table salt, sodium chloride, is a great source of nutritional sodium. The Purdue researcher used small hamster-watering bottles in his limited study area to monitor the amount of salt he was adding to the environment. Scattering little drinking stations and keeping the bottles full isn't possible over rabbit patches measuring in the hundreds of acres, such as those found on Glendale. What is possible, and quite inexpensive, is to buy those large, white cattle blocks, which are solid salt, break the blocks into bar-of-soap-sized chunks and toss these miniature salt blocks out into briar patches. The rabbits soon find them and stock up on their sodium requirements.
The salt is not the only thing that has made a difference at Glendale. Other, more traditional habitat work, such as building brushpiles, planting food plots, is going on, too. The result, however, has been an increase in the rabbit harvest from only a few hundred some years to nearly 2,000 in the 2000-01 season.
http://gameandfish.about.com/library/weekly/aa081702b.htm
My question is, is it really that simple to increase the cottontails on your farm by just throwing out several chunks of a salt block in thick cover? Has anyone else heard of this? Seems pretty easy to me.
What do you guys think?
JANUARY
Rabbits
Glendale FWA
Who'd have thought the key to having a successful rabbit season was as simple as "putting a little salt on the rabbit's tail." That's not exactly the truth, but "salt" management is boosting rabbit populations on many FWAs across Indiana, and it has been particularly successful at Glendale FWA.
Several years ago, wildlife research done at Purdue University found that a lack of sodium in the diet of rabbits could have a negative affect on their "fecundity." Fecundity is the term biologists use to describe the ability of a species to produce offspring. Basically, the research showed that cottontails with low sodium levels don't "breed like rabbits" and that introducing sodium to the environment in a manner rabbits would use made the rabbits healthier.
Common table salt, sodium chloride, is a great source of nutritional sodium. The Purdue researcher used small hamster-watering bottles in his limited study area to monitor the amount of salt he was adding to the environment. Scattering little drinking stations and keeping the bottles full isn't possible over rabbit patches measuring in the hundreds of acres, such as those found on Glendale. What is possible, and quite inexpensive, is to buy those large, white cattle blocks, which are solid salt, break the blocks into bar-of-soap-sized chunks and toss these miniature salt blocks out into briar patches. The rabbits soon find them and stock up on their sodium requirements.
The salt is not the only thing that has made a difference at Glendale. Other, more traditional habitat work, such as building brushpiles, planting food plots, is going on, too. The result, however, has been an increase in the rabbit harvest from only a few hundred some years to nearly 2,000 in the 2000-01 season.