North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

Rabbit problems here are cylclical and pretty rare.  Last time it happened we had a high snow winter and by the time I noticed the issue I had trees girdled all the way up the trunks of many trees in my nursery -over 3' of girdled trunk..  Even then I couldn't trap enough of them to put a dent in the problem.  You should either circle the trees with chicken wire or just shovel away the snow from around the trees.  My driveway is about 150' feet so it can't be worse than that if we're talking about a home orchard.  You can also protect the big wood on the branches by wrapping with al. foil.