05/12/2025
Good info to know!
From Crows Hollow Wildlife Care’s page:
I found a bunny nest in my yard and I need to mow my yard or I'm pretty sure my dog will find the nest! What do I do?!
Mother rabbits choose our front and back yards to have their nest because of all the human traffic and pet traffic. Most predators are reluctant to come right up to our house, so a garden or a front or backyard is a perfect place to have a nest.
Mother rabbits will have five or six liters of bunnies a year and most of the time our dogs never find them and hopefully our mowers don't either.
What do I do if I need to mow my grass and there's a bunny nest? The babies are only in the nest about 15 days so the best thing to do is to mow around that area and leave the grass long for a couple of weeks as in the picture. This homeowner has mowed around an area with a nest and they will just be able to mow it once the bunnies leave the nest.
Sometimes people will put a cone or a flag next to the nest so they remember that it's there. Keep in mind a mother rabbit often will renest in the same nest all summer so if you mow in between her nestings, she may move her nest to
another, less volatile location.
We cannot move the nest! Rabbits have a built-in GPS for the location of their nest and they are not an animal that can move their babies and still find the nest.
To protect a nest from dogs or cats, many homeowners create a little brick cave for the nest and then surround and cover it with landscape wires or garden fencing as in the photograph.
Mama rabbit will just slip through the gap in the wire. For large dogs it's not a bad idea to use taller garden fencing or an x-pen with wide enough gaps that Mom can slip through. Rabbits have very narrow skulls and can slip through an area about 3 inches wide. They do not need a large gap.
Other folks take a laundry basket and cut about a 3-4" hole in it then place a brick on top or tent stakes on the base lip of the basket to keep it in place to keep small dogs out.
Another option is to just cover the nest with a crate or basket during the day and uncover it at night so Mom can visit and feed her Young. Rabbits have some of the highest milk fat content of any mammal milk and they only need to nurse their babies once or twice a night.
If you think that's incredible, know that there is a tree shrew in the tropics who hide their babies in a tree den and in order to not alert predators to their presence, she only visits them ONCE every two to three days to nurse them.
Again this is a mammal that has the highest milk fat content of pretty much any mammal on earth, so it takes the babies a couple of days to digest their meal before they need their next one. The babies grow extremely fast and are weaned around 10 days, which gives them the best chance for overall survival as they are otherwise very vulnerable in the nest.
Nature is truly miraculous in design and these animals have incredible adaptations to protect their babies by spending as little time with them as possible which could alert predators to the presence of their young.
Enjoy the bunnies that are growing in your yard. If you have questions about a nest or whether bunnies have been orphaned, contact a rehabilitator to find out the next best steps to test the nest or to determine the true status of the bunnies.
To find a local Ohio rehabilitator visit www.owra.org. if you Google that address a tab will come up titled "find a rehabilitator ".
Rehabilitators are listed by county and you can find the nearest one to you that rehabilitates small mammals.
Keep in mind that rehabilitators are volunteers, there is no fee to take an animal to a rehabilitator for care, and most of us work full-time jobs to be able to do Wildlife rehabilitation. So we are not an emergency rescue service, but we certainly will help sick and injured Wildlife that citizens find and wish to bring to rehab for medical care.
We know that finding an animal that you believe to be injured or orphaned is very stressful and you want to help it right away. Not all animals actually need our help and we can help you figure that out.
We thank our communities for all the care and compassion to inquire about wildlife and get help for those animals truly sick or injured and in need of hospital care.
Ohio Wildlife Rehabilitators Association connects injured wildlife, the public, and licensed rehabilitators throughout the state of Ohio and beyond.
