Aggressive rabbits attacking chickens

[Jenni Hen]

I've a friend who's kept poultry all his life. Yesterday he told me about something surprising and disturbing.

His friend told him that the two RIR roosters had flown out of their pen. My friend went to investigate; and saw aggressive rabbits in it. They had the hens herded up and were attacking them, biting them and pulling out feathers. It happened again and now his hens won't go out.

I'd have found this hard to believe except that my sister has recently had extreme problems with rabbits on the allotments; no-one can find a way of keeping them off the veg- they just chew through everything and eat all the veg. including pulling out the root crops to eat.

I wondered if anyone else has heard of rabbits attacking chickens? Or of unusually destructive rabbit behaviour?

This is in the North of England (Lancashire-Yorkshire border and County Durham)

 

[mowin]

I'm told that that they were the wild brown ones. I don't know what you mean by, 'skeptical'.

I mean I'm not quite buying it. Just can't see wild rabbits as aggressors. Are we talking cottontail, jackrabbits, snowshoe?
Cottontail, I'd have to see it with my own eyes to believe it. No experience with jackrabbit and limited with snowshoe.

 

[BelovedBirds]

I've a friend who's kept poultry all his life. Yesterday he told me about something surprising and disturbing.

His friend told him that the two RIR roosters had flown out of their pen. My friend went to investigate; and saw aggressive rabbits in it. They had the hens herded up and were attacking them, biting them and pulling out feathers. It happened again and now his hens won't go out.

I'd have found this hard to believe except that my sister has recently had extreme problems with rabbits on the allotments; no-one can find a way of keeping them off the veg- they just chew through everything and eat all the veg. including pulling out the root crops to eat.

I wondered if anyone else has heard of rabbits attacking chickens? Or of unusually destructive rabbit behaviour?

This is in the North of England (Lancashire-Yorkshire border and County Durham)

this is very interesting. Rabbits are not naturally aggressive animals, but will be in defence/fear.
They can also be incredibly territorial. So my guess is that they live extremely close and got stuck in the pen/spooked by the chickens.
I would reinforce the pen as best as I can, and ensure there's a mesh skirt so that the rabbits cannot dig under.
I'd also look around the property for where the rabbits may be living, and look into ways to deter them from the property.

 

[Jenni Hen]

Thank you very much, Andele. That's helpful even if not what we'd like to be the case!
The hens are housed in what used to be the large chicken sheds of a poultry farm, so their indoor housing is secure and it is quite roomy. Each section has its own pop door to an outdoor run that is fenced. My friend built a stronger fence that he thought would keep out the rabbits but they found another way in!
I'll warn him about how vicious the attacks can be and that he needs to check the pop-hole doors and anywhere in the sheds where rabbits might break in. He's retired from proper poultry farming and now can enjoy his chickens as a hobby but he still has an egg round so he can't afford to lose any eggs.

 

[Jenni Hen]

this is very interesting. Rabbits are not naturally aggressive animals, but will be in defence/fear.
They can also be incredibly territorial. So my guess is that they live extremely close and got stuck in the pen/spooked by the chickens.
I would reinforce the pen as best as I can, and ensure there's a mesh skirt so that the rabbits cannot dig under.
I'd also look around the property for where the rabbits may be living, and look into ways to deter them from the property.

That's a helpful idea, thank you. This used to be a working, mixed farm with a lot of poultry - 35k I think - housed in several long sheds.
I understand that one of the sheds has recently been sold off and demolished by the new owner, and my friend thinks that's how the rabbits found a way in. His father had the farm before him and he's used to it being properly secure but now with new people around it might not be the same.
I think this fits with your suggestion, because, if any neighbouring rabbits discovered a new place for themselves, then by what you say they would feel territorial about it. This might seem extra-important to them after the dry summer when nothing has grown as normal. Then, when the chickens appeared, from the rabbits' p.o.v. the chickens would be the intruders.
I don't think there was any suggestion of the rabbits being stuck or cornered in the pen.
My friend said he'd made a sturdier fence straight away but the rabbits got in again and the improved fence only made it harder for the chickens to escape! I can definitely mention the mesh skirt idea. The rest might be more of a subject for discussion with the new person who's altered things.

 

[Jenni Hen]

We don't have much wildlife and what there is, is mostly under threat from human development. However, it's unusual for rabbits to be a nuisance even on unfenced veggie plots. We don't have woodchucks but there are deer in some wooded areas, but they wouldn't approach a building.
I'm thinking if maybe the rabbits had been under stress from the dry summer and maybe some other factor, discovered a new area and then found intruders (chickens) in it, they might get really stressed ouf if they couldn't make the intruders go away. Where we would see terrified chickens cornered and cowering, a stressed-out rabbit might see an intruder that refuses to budge however hard they try to make it go away.
Would that make sense?
(I'd like to add that I really appreciate that people have taken time to think about this and reply to my posts, thank you very much!)

 

[BelovedBirds]

We don't have much wildlife and what there is, is mostly under threat from human development. However, it's unusual for rabbits to be a nuisance even on unfenced veggie plots. We don't have woodchucks but there are deer in some wooded areas, but they wouldn't approach a building.
I'm thinking if maybe the rabbits had been under stress from the dry summer and maybe some other factor, discovered a new area and then found intruders (chickens) in it, they might get really stressed ouf if they couldn't make the intruders go away. Where we would see terrified chickens cornered and cowering, a stressed-out rabbit might see an intruder that refuses to budge however hard they try to make it go away.
Would that make sense?
(I'd like to add that I really appreciate that people have taken time to think about this and reply to my posts, thank you very much!)

I think that is a possibility. All we know is that the rabbits are not being predatory, they are definitely being defensive.

Now, I have a bunny, who is domestic yes, but has just been rescued from a bad scenario where she was left to go wild.
Now, some times when I step in her pen (big old pen) she charges my foot, and growls!
Rabbits can look very brave and very aggressive sometimes, but all that aggression comes from a place of either fear, or territorial behaviour. Both are natural defences.

Another thing to consider is how very protective mother rabbits are with their kits. I've seen them take on snakes, when threatened. So if a chicken perhaps got too close to a smaller, younger baby, they may have been attacked for that reason.

So all that said, this is all theories. Why the rabbits set about intruding on the chickens, and why they attacked them specifically, we may never know. But rabbits are fairly limited in what they can or cant get into.
Good strong wire fencing, and a mesh skirt (coming a foot or two out, just inches under the soil at 90 degrees) should do the trick.

 

[Jenni Hen]

That does make a lot of sense. I did suffer from a territorial pet rabbit once. It was my daughter's and it liked to run around holding a large piece of paper (why?!). One day I was there and was marking some exam papers for a qualification. Unfortunately, the bunny decided they were his and when I tried to retrieve a script he sank his teeth into my hand and someone else had to get him off! I managed not to bleed on the it, phew!!

However, I'd no idea that a rabbit would take on a snake. That's very courageous.

I would guess that the chances are, that the chickens intruded on the rabbits, rather than vv, because they normally live inside the shed in a sort of indoor pen, like a loose-box in a barn, and go out through the pop-hole if they want to, and only if the weather's nice. - or so I'm told! It's high on a hill so can be damp and windswept.

I tend to worry about what's in grass because we had a pony that had to be euthanised and the post-mortem tests revealed cadmium poisoning. We got him from someone who'd had him grazing on waste sites in an industrial area :-( .
Also, some veg-growers are experiencing problems due to herbicide residues in commercial bags of manure.

Your explanation about rabbit behaviours seems much the most likely and the mesh skirt sounds like a useful addition to the fence.
In Scotland there are deer fences in some places but mainly so they don't run onto the roads. In England smallholders will use mesh skirts to deter foxes from chicken runs but 'backyard' people don't usually do that. I've laid paving blocks instead and have secure coops and heavy gauge mesh, but many chickens are protected only by chicken wire.

I feel that I've learned a lot from this discussion - thank you very much indeed!

 

[andele]

Yes, rabbits can attack chickens, and their behavior can be quite destructive. I have heard of instances where rabbits have killed chickens by biting their throats or backs, as well as cases where they have eaten the chicken's eggs. In addition, rabbits can damage chicken coops and other property in their quest for food. While this type of behavior is not common, it is not unheard of, and I would recommend taking steps to protect your chickens if you are concerned about rabbit attacks. There are a number of ways to do this, including keeping the chickens in a secure coop and/or enclosed run, and/or installing a fence around the property. I haven't heard about this problem in North of England but heard in common.

 

[mowin]

Domestic rabbits, absolutely. Wild ones, I'm skeptical.