Rabbit-Powered Lawnmower

Rabbit-Powered Lawnmower FARM HOME Lawn Mowers (31h,38) 20-4-22 It's simple. It's quiet. And it doesn't cost anything to operate. Those are the benefits of a rabbit-powered lawnmower invented by Australian botanist Nigel Wace. He began experimenting with the rabbit mower years ago to entertain his children. But when he set it up near his office at the Australian National University in Canberra this spring to keep the lawn trimmed, word of the unique mower quickly spread all over the world. Wace told FARM SHOW he's been in-undated by dozens of calls from everywhere. The mower consists of three 27-in. dia. bicycle wheels set 3 ft. apart parallel to each other. They're covered with a 7-ft. wide piece of 1 in. rigid wire mesh. A 5 gal. bucket, which serves as a hutch to shelter the rabbits from the elements, mounts in-side the mower. Two large male rabbits do the "mowing", walking the wire cylinder all over the yard. Once they've "mowed" down grass underneath the cage, they simply roll it to a new spot in the lawn where there's more growth. They occasionally need a little push when they get stuck, Wace notes. One benefit is they fertilize the lawn as they go, he adds. Wace settled on rabbits after experimenting with everything from caged guinea pigs to small, fenced-in kangaroos. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Nigel Wace, Division of Archaeology & Natural History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia 0200.

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