I thought I’d provide an update on my rabbit issue in case it’s of use to anyone. I took a 2 step approach.
STEP 1: Get the rabbits to stop coming to my lawn to munch on it.
Prior to @Linn posting his Repels All suggestion, I had already ordered two products:
Coyote Urine
Ortho Deer B Gon
Both had mixed reviews on Amazon, but they were better for these products than most, or at least just as good. Of the two, the ‘Ortho Deer B Gon’ certainly seems to be the most effective for me. The first night I sprayed it and didn’t see rabbits for a few days. The product claims that you can water after 20 minutes, and claims that it lasts 30 days. It also states that it covers 10,000 sq. ft. I didn’t find any of those claims to be the case for now. The rate that the product came out will probably only end up covering about 1/3rd of that 10,000 sq.ft, but I plan to play around with the application rate to see if I can throttle it back. After a couple of irrigation cycles I had to reapply, which meant about 6 days in our hot weather. This week seems to be better, so maybe the rabbits have just decided to move on ? I sprayed the Ortho right on the lawn. It has almost a cinnamon smell to it.
I used the Coyote Urine on the periphery at various times throughout the last couple of weeks, in some cases when I knew that the Ortho had washed away. The concept is that the rabbits will smell the scent and detect a coyote has been there and it won’t want to take any chances. I didn’t spray right on the lawn as I didn’t want to negatively affect the pH of the soil. Needless to say it smells absolutely awful when spraying, but I didn’t notice much odor the next day. The bottle will last me longer than the Ortho, but I’m not sure that it has had any significant impact. When the bottle runs out I’ll stick with the Ortho if I need to continue. Again, my hope is that they rabbits just find somewhere else to eat for a while.
STEP 2: Test my soil’s pH.
Since animal urine can affect the soil pH I decided to have it tested. I bought this soil test kit and sent it in for testing.
The kit costs $14.99, and the shipping for me was ~$10. They email you the results within 2 days after they receive them, so I had results within a week of ordering it from Amazon Prime. If you tell them what you are growing in the soil, they give you the ideal pH and a specific treatment plan.
The ideal pH for Bermuda is 6.5. You can see that at 8.0 my pH was high, so they recommended that I add elemental sulfur and gave a specific amount. They also recommended the amount of nitrogen and potash to add. I bought the elemental sulfur at Lowe’s in the garden section, added it the fertilizer and applied it with a drop spreader last night, watering immediately afterward. Hopefully the lawn won’t burn anywhere. We’ve had some monsoon activity which has dropped temps and provided cloud cover, so I’m hopeful.
So I wondered how my high pH might correlate to rabbit urine. A quick web search turned up an article that shows rabbit urine is alkaline. Go figure that so was my lawn soil. My lawn soil pH pretty much matched the rabbit urine pH.
Six months ago I bought an irrigation controller. Now I find myself buying coyote urine and researching rabbit urine pH. Sad but true.