Breeding like Rabbits

Dear Morgan,

That mouse that the cat brought in, never turned up again, and I fortunately do not have the pitter patter of tiny mouse feet anywhere in the house.  I’m sure if I did, my cat would alert me to it, but she has not been interested in anything.  Although she does go into my wardrobe occasionally and I get suspicious, but as soon as I take an interest, she walks out – so I gather there is no mice in there.

But, rabbits are another matter.  Since the great big macho cat over the road got knocked down by a car and killed, it’s been completely up to Kassia to keep the rabbit population at bay.  But it’s worn her out totally.  Either that or she’s gone on strike.  So instead of being outdoors and hunting, she keeps moaning in front of the hall cupboards until I take out a fluffy brown blanket.  It then goes on the leather couch and she retires there for most of the day.  It’s not cold enough for her electric blanket yet!

Anyway.  There are rabbits galore.  Everywhere.  I never thought I would ever want to kill a living creature, but when several rabbits start eating up your $2000 lawn, you start to want to deal in arms and buy the biggest bazooka you can get your hands on and nuke the bloody things.  They are no longer CUTE or SOFT & FURRY.  They become monster ogres with giant paws that are making holes the size of china in your lawn.  They even eat the roots of your trees.  Grrrrrrrrrr!

To give you a lesson in the size of the problem imagine the following.

One house next to a vineyard.

100 yards away at the end of the vineyard, there are 15-20 rabbits frolicking.

100 yards away at the other end of the vineyard there are 15-20 rabbits frolicking.

These are not cute, as they don’t seem to understand boundaries and slip into my yard.  I know the grass is greener on my side but that is not the point!

Lets for the sake of making things easy we’ll say there are 20 rabbits at one end and 20 rabbits at the other.  40 rabbits altogether.  At least half of those are females.

Week 1:  20 female rabbits get together with 20 male rabbits and do a bit of rabbiting hanky panky.    40 Adults. 20 Females
Week 2:  Holes in my lawn
Week 3:  Holes in my lawn
Week 4:  Holes in my lawn
Week 5:  Holes in my lawn
Week 6:  Holes in my lawn
Week 7:  20 Female rabbits give birth to 8 babies each.  That’s 160 Babies. 40 adults, 20 Females, 20 * 8 Babies (160)
Week 8:  20 Female Rabbits get together with 20 male rabbits and do a bit of rabbiting hanky panky
Weeks 9: Holes in the lawn
Week 10:  Holes in the lawn
Week 11:  Holes in the lawn
Week 12:  Kassia brings in four baby rabbits and puts 3  under my bed and one under the dining table.  So that makes 156 babies.

Adults – 40  (Females 20)
Babies – 156 (Females 78)
Total  – 196

Week 13-16: Holes in the lawn
Week 17: 20 female rabbits give birth to 160 babies.  Total baby rabbits: 316

Adults: 40 (Females 20)
Babies: 316
Total 356

Week 18: 20 female rabbits get together wither 20 male rabbits and do a bit of rabbiting hanky panky.
Week 19-24: Holes in lawn.  Kassia too exhausted to get any more babies and lounges around sleeping on the furry blanket in the lounge.
Week 25:  20 Female rabbits give birth to another 160 babies.  Total Baby rabbits: 476

Adults: 40 (20 Females)
Babies: 476
Total: 516

Week 26: The first babies are now sexually mature.  So out of the 156 babies, half of these will be female (give or take a few).  That’s 78 new females – add that to the other 20 – that 98 females doing a bit of rabbiting hanky panky.
Week 27-30: Holes in lawn.  Cat still too tired to do anything after the last 4 rabbits, and the magpies are onto to her and won’t let her into the vineyard anyway.
Week 31: 98 females have 8 baby rabbits each.  Total baby rabbits: 784 plus the last two breeding of 320 which now makes a total of 1104.

Total adults: 196  (98 Females)
Older babies:  320
New babies: 784
Total:  1300

Week 32:  The adults get it on again, plus the second lot of babies….
Week 32-40:  My lawn now looks like Craters from the Moon.  There’s an odd patch of grass, and my trees have all died as they have eaten all the roots.
Week 41 – the female populations of 98 + 80 (178) give birth to 8 rabbits each. Total:  1424 babies born.
Week 42 – I no longer have any lawn or any trees.  The ground is too dangerous to walk on.  If you do you’re likely to break both legs when accidentally tripping over a rabbit hole.  The ground is a seething mass of brown fur.  The cat is too scared to go outside for fear of giant bunnies.   Now 260 pairs of bunnies are in bunny heaven mating with each other to make more babies.   You can’t sleep at night knowing all this sexual activity is going on outside.  The ground reverberates and it’s not another earthquake – it’s just the earth moving for all these bunnies.

6 weeks later They give birth to 2080 rabbits.
I can’t count any more.  But in six, 6 week periods, a total of 4960 bunnies!

		Adults	females	babies per adult	Number of babies	Total babies
	Week 1	40	20	8	160	160
	2nd 6 week	40	20	8	160	320
3 months	3rd 6 week	40	20	8	160	480
	4th 6 week	40	20	8	160	640
	5th 6 week	200	100	8	800	1440
6 months	6th 6 week	360	180	8	1440	2880
	7th 6 week	520	260	8	2080	4960
	8th 6 week	680	340	8	2720	7680
9 months	9th 6 week	1480	740	8	5920	13600
	10th 6 week	2920	1460	8	11680	25280
	11th 6 week	5000	2500	8	20000	45280
12 months	12th 6 week	7720	3860	8	30880	76160

Now where is that Bazooka – it hasn’t arrived yet!