(soft piano music)
- Okay, so we're looking at a warren system here
that we're going to fumigate;
and one of the considerations with fumigating is,
especially cause we tend to do it during the day,
then most of the rabbits are generally going
to be underground,
but if you've got an area like this where you've got
a bit of long grass there's still the possibility that
rabbits are above the ground,
and if they're not in the burrows then
fumigating's not going to affect them.
So one handy thing that can be done is,
if you've got some working dogs
that are keen on chasing rabbits,
is actually have the dogs work the area around
the warren before you fumigate them
and quite possibly drive any rabbits that are above
the ground underground
so that they can be there when you do the fumigation.
Now what we have here is a modified fumigator;
it used to be commonly used with larvicide,
which was a fumigant for killing rabbits,
but that's no longer available.
But one of the things attached to these fumigators
is a smoking device which enables you to help find
entrances to burrows,
to warren complexes,
so that's still a very handy tool to use
if you're able to get hold of one through a state agency
or wherever you are.
Because one of the most important things when dealing with
a rabbit warren when you're fumigating
is finding all the entrances.
If you miss an entrance or a pop-hole somewhere in
the distance away from the warren,
that gives the rabbits an escape route,
and if they're not in there
you're not going to have any success.
So using one of these smokers,
which I'll get going now,
all they do is put diesel onto the hot exhaust
and that pumps smoke into the warren complex,
and then you'll find it feeding out through
the entrances,
and you can take note of where they are
and make sure that you get all of them
when you do your actual fumigating.
(motor starts running)
As you'll start to see in this instance,
you've got a little pop-hole over there which you can see
but there's actually smoke coming in on the other side of
the fence there out of another entrance over there,
so that gives you more indication of where
to go looking for entrances.
(motor runs)
So when you're smoking it's a good idea to leave
the smoker going for a while,
because that'll give it time to go through all the tunnels,
because as we can see here very faintly;
unfortunately the wind's a bit annoying;
but we've got three other entrances here
which are actually connected to those burrows over there.
So they're virtually ten metres away,
so it's quite an extensive warren system
and obviously still active.
(motor switches off)
Now, the aluminium phosphide tablets that we use
when fumigating rabbit burrows
are actually quite a common thing used in agriculture
for fumigating silos and things like that,
but one thing I really would like to stress,
because it's something that quite
a few people have actually said to me,
that they're not dangerous to humans;
well I'm afraid they are very much so,
so they need to be stored very, very carefully;
make sure they're locked up,
not accessible to children.
It's just one thing I'm quite passionate about
is that, if you've got these things,
when you're not using them that they're stored safely
well away from where anybody
that shouldn't access them can't access them.
What I'm gonna demonstrate now is best practice for
fumigating with aluminium phosphide tablets,
and the idea of fumigating with them is to do with,
once you've worked out all the different entrances to
a warren complex,
or if you're dealing with an individual burrow.
One of the first things you do is actually look at
the entrance and just see exactly what the entrances does.
This one's quite simple;
some entrances actually divide
and might go in two different directions,
so it's pretty important to identify that
because you may need to actually fumigate with two burrows.
But the best way to do it is using a bit of poly pipe,
and the idea of that is you can use that to get
the tablets well down into the burrow.
The idea of doing that is so that
when you’ve back filled with dirt
you protect the tablets from being covered by dirt.
So normally you would then take a couple of tablets,
pop them down in the tube,
then make sure you seal that off again,
put it well away.
Then, bearing in mind we have a couple
of tablets down in the tube,
tip some water down the hole
so that ensures the tablets get wet.
Then grab a little bit more paper.
And pull the tube out;
the hole is now blocked.
And then we follow up by
blocking the entrance with dirt,
tamping it down
so that's got a good seal on it,
and the tablets are down in there protected from
being covered by dirt by the paper
and they'll be easily dissolving,
making clouding gas.
So then you go round and do the rest of the entrances
on the complex that you've found.
(soft piano music)