Leanne
Wise Old Thumper
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?
The thing is though, the disease mutates too, so although one population becomes immune, another strain of the illness can come along and wipe them out again. It's all swings and roundabouts really. :?
It's the same for the vaccine, I think it was last year a number of vaccinated buns died and it was thought that it was a strain that wasn't covered with the current vaccination (it must have mutated after clinical trials for the latest batches?).
If a wild rabbit was clearly suffering heavily from myxi, I would want to put it out of it's suffering.
At my last place of work, we actually ended up calling in a marksman as our rabbits were dropping like flies and suffering so bad. I was literally stumbling over buns that were dying or so blind and poorly, there couldn't move out the way of people/predators. There were too many to take to the vets (vets round here aren't that willing unless you hand over cash for that amount of work), so we chose this route, as heartbreaking as it was.