Wild Rabbits and Myxomatosis

Over the last week or so, Remus, our 9 month old puppy has been finding rabbits.  Some he's caught (and not always killed himself - that has been Hubby's job) and some he's found already dead.

We found one yesterday when we were picking plums down the gully.  It seemed to be quite fat and healthy, with no noticeable marks on it.  It was just dead.  We quickly restrained the dog.  We didn't know what had killed this rabbit and so didn't want to risk having the dog eat it.  We weren't quite so quick with the next two he found later on last night.  One of them, I did manage to take off him.  Once he realised I wasn't going to play a game of chase for it he lost interest.  It showed no signs of damage at all.

I rang the neighbour this evening, to ask if he knew if anyone was or would be poisoning rabbits.  To me, it's not normal for what appears to be a healthy rabbit to just drop dead.  I would have expected some sort of wasting or thinness to be signs of disease.  He didn't think so, but mentioned myxomatosis.  Apparently, like fleas (well, as it turns out - with fleas), myxomatosis becomes more active with warmer weather and he hasn't seen the volume of rabbits around that he'd normally expect.  When I told him how fat and healthy these rabbits appeared to be, he commented that they found some like that on the farm in Waipara that he does some work at.  He didn't think it would affect the dog.

I spent about ten minutes on Google after this.  First trying to spell it, then reading a little about it on Wikipedia.  I haven't spotted any of the tumours on the rabbits I've seen, but Hubby said he has.  Another bash on Google to find out if eating an infected rabbit will harm my dog and that came back as a no.  It only affects rabbits.

That's quite a relief.  I don't want to keep Remus confined all the time and if I don't, he's going to be finding and chewing on, if not eating, these dead rabbits.