Three years ago I planted a mix of 125 potted fruit trees just above the lowest dam on the farm. The first night, I lost 2 apple trees to girdling(complete bark removal around the circumference of the trunk) and knew right away I would need to protect them somehow.

I wanted to avoid using plastic tree protectors due to tree health, cost, and aesthetics. In my travels on the interwebs, I came across a recipe for making bone sauce and thought I'd give it a try.  I was attracted to this method because it is dirt cheap, organic, and easy. It worked well until this dormant season when I began to notice a few nibbles here and there low down on the trunks of some of the fruit trees. As an observation, the bareroot trees and vines I planted untreated have not had any issues and are growing WAY faster than the potted ones. The following video gives step by step instructions on how I make my bone sauce.

After three years of trial and error and some successes, I have decided to stop raising rabbits. We have been raising rabbits on pasture in 4x8 colony tractors with two nest boxes in each and a buck and 2 does per tractor. The rabbits were healthy and happy and got along well together and were making good litters.

The main reason for quitting is that our pastured hogs are rooting and digging and making the pasture too lumpy and uneven to keep the boxes flat enough to the ground to stop the rabbits from escaping through the gaps. Also, I try to mow as little as possible and the tall grass lifts the boxes up high enough for rabbits to sneak under and get out.

In the video I go into depth explaining the reasons why we chose to use this method and how it could work well for someone with flatter pasture which gets clipped regularly and is able to keep dogs and other predators away. I've not seen anyone else with a completely mobile rabbitry but I think it is a good method and I hope this info could help someone fit rabbits into an ethical, healthy rotational grazing scheme without the battery cages and all the associated problems with them.