I was doing a daylily inventory this afternoon (some haven't shown any sign of coming back), moving the leaf mulch to read tags and get some idea of which ones are up already. I accidentally disturbed this nest.



Which leads me to two questions:

1. Will the mother rabbit abandon them now? I didn't touch the babies themselves, but did disturb the leaves/grass in the area; I replaced it afterward.

2. What are the chances that they'll eat my daylilies? Do rabbits eat these? I've never seen rabbits in my beds, but it doesn't mean that the babies won't nibble. Should I worry?

Wow, they're so adorable, though!

The rabbits eat my daylilies all the time. Especially when the foliage is emerging. Sometimes they snip blooms too.

Rabbits never eat my daylily foliage or blooms that we have ever seen. There are plenty true lilys, asiatics and OT's in my garden and sometimes they will nibble on them. We have seen plenty of rabbits in my garden, there have been nests of bunnies in my garden that I moved stuff around the mother came back and raised them. I can't tell you the number of times a rabbit has scared the dickens out of me when working in the garden when they take off out of the garden. We have seen the cottontail rabbits on the lawn eating some spots of clover and dandelions our lawn.

I have tons of rabbits, and while they are very destructive, they seem to have left the daylilies alone.

The only damage from rabbits here is new tender foliage, and the baby seedlings when first planted, never had any bud damage from them.

I too have found a rabbit nest in my daylilies (twice). Cover them back up and leave them alone and mama will come back at night to feed them. In my garden they left the daylilies alone but did munch on the Asiatic lily leaves and young coneflower shoots.

If you want more info. on the babies, read this. I found it enlightening that most the time when we try to help them, we are only hurting them.
http://rabbit.org/faq-orphaned...

Lisa

We have had rabbit nests in our daylilies for a number of years. I try to count them just to see how many actually make it (we have garden snakes as well and they love baby rabbits) . Momma always comes back to look after them. It is surprising how quickly they grow.

they don't eat my dl.
the mama will be back. I have even touched them/moved them before and she returns.

She may move them. she will usually make several nests and move them around, so don't be surprised if they are gone, or if they return again. Don't trim foliage around the area, she put them there so predators would not see them.

Years ago, we had a dog that would hunt out the baby rabbits. It was not nice. The two dogs we have now are not like that. I occasionally see baby rabbits, but not often. We have a lot of coyotes around here, and I think that is the reason.