Is it really the best thing to do??
ETA: This man is going to hit one with a spade near my garden and there's nothing I can do because I'm a 'silly little girl'
In Australia they won't even let domestic buns be vacc'd against myxi... incase the immunity gets into the wild population. So not only are the aus govt willing to kill hundreds of thousands of wild rabbits, they're willing to kill every rabbit in Australia :roll:
The rabbit seems to have it very bad, it's face is just lumps, very hard to see it's eyes, just big puffy red lumps. And it doesn't seem to be able to move, from what I can see there's more lumps near it's bottom. Surely there's a nicer way for it to go without this I don't want to go outside again and I'm worried to go near the rabbit incase I bring something back to my two but I want to help it
I think what the OP means is is it kinder to put a rabbit suffering with myxi out of its misery and personally having seen a rabbit suffer from myxi and the tremendous amount of suffering it went though despite medication I do think its kinder, though using a spade is a bit drastic. My vet with euthanise wild rabbits that are brought in suffering.
The rabbit seems to have it very bad, it's face is just lumps, very hard to see it's eyes, just big puffy red lumps. And it doesn't seem to be able to move, from what I can see there's more lumps near it's bottom. Surely there's a nicer way for it to go without this I don't want to go outside again and I'm worried to go near the rabbit incase I bring something back to my two but I want to help it
Rabbits are becoming immune to it in England. The rabbit population at my university catch it every year and although it's horrible to see a lot of them recover from it. Every wild adult rabbit at the UEA has had myxi and survived.
There is a leading researcher there, possibly the leading researcher in the wild European rabbit and I have been in contact with her via email after I saw a particularly bad rabbit. She said she would never put one down at any stage of the illness because she has seen them recover. They are passing the immunity onto their kits. So nowadays I'm not too fond of the idea of killing them.
I could not take it to the vets but I kept asking the man but he wouldn't let me go near it, and I didn't want to go near it because of my two buns. He said it was not difficult to kill it quickly because it couldn't move, he has now burried it (far away from my house).
There was wild rabbits living on a field next to my house but one but they are now building a house there so this team (I read the back of their jackets from my window to make sure they weren't killing the rabbits) took them away to fields and woods somwhere else. But obviously some would've been left behind. My garden is now wild rabbit proof because my parents have been working on it to make it like that so none can get it and they've just finished it so hopefully none can get in to my garden. My rabbits are vaccinated and always will be having their 6 monthly boosters. They have mosquito nets over their housing too.
That's interesting.
Sadly, it's not reached that stage here yet. Our local populations are still dying from it. The last 3 years have been really bad.
I get really confused now. Obviously if it's wiping entire populations out it might be kinder to put them to sleep as they catch it. But then if even one survives it can pass on it's immunity. It's horrible for them to go through it, but maybe in a a hundred years or so they could become fully immune to is a species?