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Short walls can keep out rascally rabbits

Question: We are planning a wall to surround our yard so we can keep the rabbits out. We live in Sun City Anthem in Henderson. We have been told that the local rabbits can jump very high, and our 3-foot wall will not work to keep them out.

I don’t agree with the advice you were given. Our chicken coop wire at 3 feet tall was very effective at keeping them out of our vegetable plots as long as they could not lift the bottom edge of it with their noses or dig a little bit and get under it.

Usually, animals will not jump walls if they cannot see the other side. If they can jump to the top of it and look, that is different. I have never seen rabbits do that. But check and make sure there are no gaps in the wall itself. If they can get their head through a hole, they can get the rest of their body through it as well.

Bob Morris is a professor emeritus in horticulture with the University of Nevada and can be reached at extremehort@aol.com. Visit his blog at
xtremehorticulture.blogspot.com. For more, see Thursday’s Las Vegas Review-Journal.

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