The worlds most expensive dead rabbit

The rabbit population on our property is getting completely out of line, and the Calicivirus release only seemed to provide a temporary lull in the explosion.  They don't seem to eat the Pindone enhanced oats readily and the delays in getting trained in the use of Pindone carrots have been ridiculous.

So I decided in November 2011 to acquire - through a legal process - a low powered gun to deal with the issue.  I got my gun, an Optimo .410 shotgun, on Monday 7 May.  I may at some stage post about the cause of this vast time lag, but this post is about the financial cost.

Item 1: Gun safety course ($135)
Item 2: 5 year Gun License ($200)
Item 3: Gun safe: ($220)
Item 4: Permit to acquire firearm ($30)
Item 5: Gun ($255)

Total $840

This morning I shot my first rabbit.  Had I decided to butcher and eat it, rather than chucking it up the hill for the raptors and foxes to dispose of, one could only wash such expensive meat down with a bottle of Grange!

As a footnote to this, having noticed that a hole giving access under our red shed was clearly being used on a regular basis I positioned my possum trap ($100) in front of it.  In the 10 days since thi post was originally published I have caught and disposed of 3 rabbits.  That brings the total caught with the trap to approximately 50- about $2 each!

Fleabane part 2

After the apparent success in part of the top paddock on 10 March I decided to go and deal with the weeds in the re-vegetated paddock on the 11th.  Clearly there were a lot to deal with: note also the height of the acacias in the background.

 This is a close-up of one of the taller flower spikes of Fleabane.  Since the side branches were never higher than the axis and the plants were often >1m high I concluded that this was Tall Fleabane (Conyza albida).

 That ID tends to be confirmed by the relatively un-dented leaves.

 As I wandered this paddock I noticed a number of spots where brambles were beginning to emerge.  My Weed Whacka dealt with them swiftly.

There were no Eucalypt seedlings growing here but it did look as though acacia seedlings were beginning to emerge in the areas between the furrows.  I am basing this on them being a green tree - probably Acacia mearnsii, rather than the grey-blue A. dealbata which is the dominant local species.

The (flea)bane of our life

It seems that each year  has a weed which goes ballistic.  This year it has been Fleabane (Conyza sp).

 I had decided that it was too hard to deal with such an infestation and, since it doesn't grow well in a dry year, Nature would eventually take care of it.  I also had other weed-removal priorities such as brambles, briars, Verbascum and Serrated Tussock.  Then

1. one of our neighbours commented how she really hates it and was trying to remove it from her property; and
2. I read in the local gazette that pulling the flower heads off gives fair control.

So I felt guilty and took myself and my brushcutter up to make a start in the top paddock.  here is the situation before I started.

As will be seen it isn't a solid cover but is in profusion.  After about an hour (that is about all the noise I can allow myself to inflict on the area) and a tank of two-stroke here is a snap from more or less the same place.

An improvement I think.

Using the brush cutter was far quicker work than attempting to pull the plants up.  I can see no way of doing this with herbicide without killing every plant in the paddock.  Tractor slashing has a number of problems:

• I don't own a slasher (or a tractor);
• slasher blades (and tractor tyres) don't like sharp rocks;
• it would be hard to discriminate between the fleabane and desirable plants such as Xerochrysum viscosum

It would also be hard to protect the many eucalypt seedlings growing in the paddock.

 I shall have to do an assessment of these at some stage but I suspect there are some hundreds of them across the entire 20 acres (say 7 Ha) of the paddock. 

Why don't the Scots keep them?

On our morning walks with the small dog we often carry a brickies hammer for dealing, in an environmentally friendly - albeit not particularly caring and sharing - manner with larger weeds which we encounter.  Chief among the victims are Verbascum and thistles.  

This morning my attention was drawn to a cluster of Scotch Thistles growing up through a clump of dead Acacia dealbata.

Trying to whup this lot was going to thoroughly muck u the walk so I returned later to deal with the mess.  As we have told that once the purple has appeared the seeds are set and will still be released I had a used potting soil bag with me to cart the residue back to my bonfire in a contained way.

As might be assessed from the image there were way too many to fit in one bag if inserted entire.  So my approach was to knock the purple bits off with my kwanja, insert them in the bag and then use the brickies hammer to dig up the roots, which were left on site to dry out and DIE!  This seemed to do the job fairly well.

As can be seen from this close up the flowers are rather attractive in a rather punk style.

However I am unaware of anything that uses the plants (although apparently goats will eat them) and they are extremely invasive.   For the Scots to have this as their National floral emblem is rather like NSW adopting Smilax australis.

Eucalyptus resurrection

Our property is blessed with a good number of Box trees.  There are a few Apple Box (Eucalyptus bridgesiana) and larger numbers of Yellow Box (E. meliodora) and Red Box (E. polyanthemos).

One of the larger Re Box between our house and Whiskers Creek has been looking a tad unwell.  Note the upper RHS of the tree in this poor photograph.

I had been expecting it to die completely especially after a large branch too a dive recently.  Here is the stump left after the descent.

However this morning - some 2 months after the branch fell I happened to notice some growth occurring adjacent to the stump.

On peering more closely at the centre of the tree it was apparent that there is quite an amount of epicormic growth happening in parts of the tree.

If we get a decent amount of rain perhaps it will, like the South, come again!  Certainly one tree - not far away from the one discussed above - which had fallen over before we took ownership of the place has sprouted again from the rootstock and is now over 3m tall.

Rain makes the weeds grow.

While walking the small dog this morning I noticed that the showers overnight had made some Serrated tussock (Nassella trichotoma) in our revegetation plot glisten somewhat. 

Since I thought I had dealt fairly firmly and well with that last year I was not going to tolerate any regrowth.
So after depositing said canine at the house I returned with shears, brickie's hammer, a sprayer full of "Tussock" which I have found to deal with this weed rather well, and my camera.  An interesting feature of the herbicide is that it requires 30mm of rain to work since the poison needs to be washed into the soil and then re-absorbed into the plant.  It does do a good job of whupping live plants.


My basic approach for this exercise was to use the shears to remove the seed heads and bag that for the bonfire heap.  I then gave the remaining bit of the tussock  ...

 

.. a squirt of the herbicide to ensure it doesn't get any smart ideas for the future.  Of course more is likely to blow in (I have heard of the seeds of this species being extracted from jet engines at 10km altitude) but that is next years problem.

While in the area I noticed many insects on the regrowth Acacias and Eucalypts.  They were photographed and  have their own post.

I also noticed some Verbascum  ...

...  which was promptly improved with the brickies hammer.  (See below for more on this blight.)

St Johns Wort ...

... was also somewhat evident.  This was a surprise since I thought I had sprayed most of it with trichlorpyr + glyphosate a few days ago.  On looking closely there was a fair amount of improvement ...

...  where I had sprayed, but other plants had obviously grown in the interim.  Since it was likely that there would be rain in the next 24 hours I decided to pull up the plants that were in flower and add them to the bonfire.  I will come back later and discipline the next generation.

There was also some Fleabane

but that is too widespread to make it on to my 'control it now' list.

While on a recent ANPS walk we had found some Giant Verbascum.  Our friend Linda took some photos of me dealing with it ...

.. and celebrating the eventual victory.

I would suggest that anyone contemplating emulating such a performance should ensure there is a physiotherapist within earshot!

Periwinkle wars

One or more of the previous owners of this place had planted some periwinkle

  - I suspect Vinca major - and it has gone berserk after two years of fair rainfall.  It is threatening to take over most of our garden (and then spread into the bush- which is why it gets a guernsey in this blog).

I have found that spraying with Triclorpyr deals with it fairly well, but that is difficult in the vicinity of our gardens on a windy day.  So when faced with this

I got going with the clippers and created the nearer part of this.

I will have to give some thought as to how to deal with the major infestation, but suspect my brushcutter may be called into play at least for the open areas.  (For brambles lurking within the periwinkle cut and dab with Triclorpyr was used.)