Nutting out the rabbit problem

Having a range of tools in the box is the key to rabbit control at an Alexandra pine nut orchard.

Orchard owner Nigel Bamford and agricultural jack-of-all-trades, Stephen Gullick say a pest control programme that utilises a number of approaches has been the winning formula. Stephen became involved with pine nuts around 4 years ago when he helped his neighbour, Nigel plant 72 hectares in Pinus pinea (pine nut) seedlings. The Alexandra block now comprises of around 20,000 trees with

| Covering all bases is the best defence against pests. Nigel an advocate of planting longterm, slow growing tree nut or fruit trees, rather than the quick turnaround pine trees. The pine nut is a valuable cash crop with trees producing cones from which the pine nuts are removed after about 15 years. Full production is usually around year 40 and the trees can live up to 200 years. However, due to their slow growth, pine nut trees are vulnerable for longer and protecting them from pests is a priority. For Nigel and Stephen, rabbits have been a real problem. “Rabbits would bite off the top of the trees which didn’t kill the tree, but it would put its growth back a year, and this would be repeated the following year,” Nigel says. Controlling the animals through night and thermal scope shooting improved the situation but did not completely eradicate the issue. As a solution, 2 years ago Stephen introduced Pindone rabbit pellets, significantly improving the situation. Manufactured and supplied to Farmlands by Key Industries, Pindone is described as a more humane and safe way to solve rabbit problems. Initially Stephen and Nigel were topping up the bait stations twice a week to get on top of the population. “Now it’s more of a maintenance programme – as long as the bait stations are kept full, we can keep the rabbit population down. We top the stations up about once a fortnight and have noticed a real difference in the growth of the trees. “Even though the trees are more established now the rabbits can still cause a lot of damage by ring barking the trees and even digging them out by their roots. We expect we will need to continue the eradication programme for another 2 to 4 years until the trees are strong enough to survive,” Stephen says. Nigel describes the rabbits as a complicated adversary. “When we first started planting, I asked a third generation Alexandra farmer for rabbit control advice and he told me, ‘use everything, and use it simultaneously’. “We know we are on top of the rabbit problem and it really is a combination of all those efforts. We will also look to improve the way we use the bait stations and continue to refine our operation to get the best results,” Nigel says.

For pest control advice for your property, contact your local Farmlands Technical Field Officer or Farmlands store.

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