Tomato plants

[Sabine]

My rabbit, Coco, loves tomato plant leaves. We have all the plants fenced off now for that reason (still hoping for tomatoes to ripen) but she always seems to get a nibble here and there. I was under the impression tomatoes belong to the family of deadly nightshades and should be poisonous? Moreover the rabbits next door won't touch my neighbour's tomato plants and she doesn't have to fence them off at all. Is Coco just clueless? She also ate all the greens of my potatoes (the harvest was pathetic) most of the strawberry leaves (she did real acrobatics to get at them since I had the plants raised), in fact there's very little she didn't eat. (I pulled the foxgloves out just in case) She never seems to get sick or anything. Is there a list of plants that rabbits won't eat. Won't bother with vegetables again but I'd love some flowers in the garden next year. Sabine

 

[Maureen Las]

http://www.adoptarabbit.com/articles/toxic.html
tomato vines and leaves are poisonous.

Just because she hasn't become ill doesn't mean that she won't in the future if you permit her to get to these plants.

 

[Sabine]

I would have thought rabbits know instinctively what's bad for them. How do their wild relations survive?

 

[Maureen Las]

Most wild rabbits don't even live a year unforunately

 

[Sabine]

But that's surely not due to poisonous plants or is it?

 

[naturestee]

It can be. Wild rabbits die from all sorts of things, not just predators. Toxic plants, diseases, etc. all play a factor too.

Tomato plants are in the nightshade family, as in deadly nightshade. Many of the plants in this family share the same toxic propertys although some have edible fruit- like the tomato.

The wild rabbits in my yard don't touch my tomato plants.

Although do keep in mind that domestic rabbits don't retain all of their ancestor's instincts, and that any animal raised in captivity will loose certain survival abilities.

 

[gentle giants]

naturestee wrote:

It can be. Wild rabbits die from all sorts of things, not just predators. Toxic plants, diseases, etc. all play a factor too.

The wild rabbits in my yard don't touch my tomato plants.

It's very true, wild rabbits don't just die from predator attack. Also, it is possible that some wild rabbits may have learned about some plants not being edible. For example, if a mother rabbit ate a small amount of something and got sick but survived, she very well might teach her babies not to eat that plantas well.

I think probably you have gotten lucky with Coco not managing to get enough at one time to hurt her. If she got in there and ate a lot, though, that would be a different story.

 

[Sabine]

Like mother like daughter. I remember when Miracle was tiny she squesed through the barrier and sat on top of the grow bag munching away on the plant. Not surprizing with a mother (Coco) who has a taste for them as well. I'll try and block them off even better so that she can't reach them by sticking her nose through the fence (the greedy thing). By the way what about potato plants although I needn't worry anymore she ate the lot