PHYSICAL INJURIES TO TREES 



B. D. VAN BUREN 



Assistant Chief, Bureau of Plant Industry, State Department of Agriculture, 



Albany, N. Y. 



The meadow mice and cotton-tail rabbits throughout the state, 

 and the jack-rabbits in the Hudson valley, cause serious injury, 

 usually to young trees. If trees are mounded eight or ten inches 

 high with earth in the fall, and the mounds are steep, but few 

 mice will climb the mounds and girdle the trees. Wood veneer 

 sheets or tarred paper protectors, if properly placed, will protect 

 the trees from injury. Both of these should be removed during 

 the summer and replaced in fall or early winter. Fine screen 

 iralvani/ed wire, %-inch mesh, one foot high, is effective in pro- 

 tecting against mice, and, if higher, is also effective against rab- 

 bits but is quite expensive. For rabbits alone, guards three 

 feet high made from one-inch mesh galvanized chick wire are very 

 effective and not extremely expensive. These can be put on when 

 trees are planted and left for six or eight years. Use the one- 

 foot high wire and cut to the desired length. This gives a 

 cylinder four inches in diameter and will furnish protection 

 against rabbits about as long as needed. Concentrated lime 

 sulphur has been quite effective as a repellent and has been used 

 extensively. At least two applications must be made each season: 

 in November or early December at the first sign of injury, and 

 again about February first. This in the long run is fully as 

 expensive as the protectors and not so safe. In case of very heavy 

 snows it might be 1 necessary to paint the trunks and branches above 

 the protectors with lime and sulphur, but this will be unnecessary 

 most seasons in the commercial apple growing sections. 



HOW TO TREAT INJURIES FROM MICE AND RABBITS 



Remove carefully with a knife all loose and dead bark. Paint 

 with asphaltum, coal tar, or white lead and oil, that part of the 

 wound from which the bark and cambium layer have been 

 removed, allowing none of the material used to come in contact 

 with the live bark. If the tree has been completely girdled, fhe 

 inner bark of cambium having been entirely destroyed, there are 



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