Rabbits are a complete pain if you happen to grow hedging and trees and fruit for a living. Cute looking they may be, but they have a horrid habit of biting branches straight through (usually close to the stem) and of tearing leaves off plants they don't bite...
We have a standing out area at Ashridge Trees where we have a fair number of potted hedge plants - escallonia, griselinia, pyracantha, photinia and so on. I walked out there this morning to find that a rabbit or rabbits had bitten through the electrified rabbit proof fence (yes, bitten and no sign of a dead one) and plundered the plants. Actually they had plundered the Elaeagnus ebbingei Limelight with barely a glance at the rest.
I guess the silver lining is that we know that Elaeagnus is not a good idea as a hedge plant when rabbits are about.
I must tell Frances .....
[...] Some plants such as holly, escallonia and griselinia can’t be sold bare-rooted as they die in minutes so we do a little bit of pot grown stuff as well. At this time of year it tends to be softer and tastier than the field grown plants – hence the bloody rabbits. [...]