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Otago Witness, Issue 1947, 18 June 1891, Page 11

Are Babbits a source of Profit or Loss 1

The following letters appeared in Tuesday's Daily Times :—

TO THE EDITOB.

Sib,— l, in common no doubt with a good many others, have been much puzzled- by the conflicting accounts whioh have appeared from time to time in the Daily Times and other papers on the rabbit question. There is an idea prevalent, I know, 'amongst some that rabbits are a source of profit to tbe station holders, and I myself have been assured by different owners of infested stations, ranging in size from 70,000 to 90,000 acres, that to keep rabbits down to a point at which they did no harm only cost them from £400 to £500 per annum after deducting the value of the skins. On the other hand, I have it on good authority that on one property in Central Otago of about 120,000 acres freehold and leasehold, the net expenditure fer a number of years was something like £3500 per annum. And if we analyse the accounts recently given by your various correspondents on the subject, they will .be found equally irreooncileable both as to cost, result, and mode of destruction. Mr George M. Bell in his letter to you tells as that in six years on 48,500 acres he caught 1,528,145 rabbits, or about equal to, say, 254,690 per annum, and at a yearly cost of £2524. Now, I understand when the factories left off work they were giving 4d per bead, and allowing, as mentioned by your other correspondent, Mr Gideon A. Smith, that for four months skins are only worth Id eaoh, still this for the year round ought to give an average of 2§d per skis, whioh for the number killed per year by Mr Bell gives £2652, leaving a profit to the good of £128.

_ As against this experience, we have that of the manager of the Kawaraa station, who on 200,000 acnes destroyed 427,500 rabbits, employing an average of 55| men, and made a loss for the station of £850. Now, if there is anything to be learned from the foregoing, it is " that if a thing is worth doing at all it is worth,doing well." At Kawaraa an average of one man is employed to every 3636 acres, and a loss made of £850, while at Wantwood, f qnal to one man to 1077 acres, with the result of a considerable profit. This is so far satisfactory, and seems conclusive that .were a sufficient number of men employed rabbits could be profitably kept at a minimum. But at this stage Mr Gideon A. Smith gives his experience on the Teviot country, and while agreeing with Mr Bell that continuous aotion is necessary to ensure tbe best results, at the same time makes it plain that the pest will be always with us, and that unless a watchful eye be kept upon the rabbit factories they will have quite the opposite effect to what their advocates claim.

It woul4.be interesting to myself and others if Mr Smijh would give his experience as to the cost of keeping the pest at a minimum, say, on the 900 acres' he referred to, or any similar information bearing on this point, as the country round Roxburgh is considered to be some of the most difficult in Otago. ' Trusting the importance of the subject will be my fcxouse for encroaching on your space. — I am, &c, Kurow, June 15. Dan. M'Kenzie.

TO THE EDITOB.

8m, — A letter of Mr Gideon A. Smith's appears in the Oiago Daily Times of the 13th inst. He contradicts a abatement I made in your columns— viz., "that 800 rabbits were trapped off a piece of Und ia a few days ; all there were there." What I said is perfectly correct. Three hundred trap} were worked by one man and a boy, and 200 rabbits a day is not an improbable number for a good man to catch in good localities. As to there not being one rabbit left, the ground was left quite clear enough to satisfy me. Messrs Green and Souness had 1500 acres of land, and Mr Hugh Maclean 600 acres (both near Gore), cleared of rabbits at 6d an acre by a trapper, who alao kept the skins, and the work was performed to their satisfaction, and they are not easily satisfied. If Mr Gideon Smith will erect a rabbit proof fence round his property he can get it cleared in the manner he proposes at Is an acre, provided there are no features in his property which render it unsuitable for trapping. My object in writing you is not to enter into a controversy with Mr Smith on the other subjects he deals wiih in his letter, but to substantiate the statement I made, and I do not think it necessary to say more in answer to his remark " if Mr Bell really believes what ho wrote," than tLat if I had not known it to be true I should not have written it. — I am, &c, George M. Bell. Wantwood, June 15.