The cottontail rabbit is principally a farm animal and fares best on relatively small cropland areas. Usually, grown-up fence rows, ditch banks, and turnrows on farms provide adequate cover. Also, much farmland that was once suitable for cottontails has been converted to improved pasture or loblolly-pine plantations. These enterprises are important, but they do not produce as many rabbits as when rows were being plowed with mules. Generally, diversification of habitats for cottontail rabbits is important, such as interspersing or mixing cover areas with feeding areas.
Good cover is probably the greatest single factor affecting rabbit populations.
Cover provides areas for rabbits to escape from predators, nest, feed, and avoid adverse weather and can be developed and maintained depending on the type of landscape involved. Where natural cover is lacking, such as in large, clean agricultural fields, cover can be increased by allowing natural vegetation along fencerows and ditchbanks to grow up into thickets. Rabbits are altricial, meaning the young are helpless at birth, so it is important that activities such as bush-hogging, disking, and burning be avoided during the nesting season, particularly in areas of suitable nesting habitat. Thick broom sedge fields of several acres may be broken up by planting evergreens, and around field edges and in the forest, trees can be felled to the ground carefully, leaving trees attached at the stumps and still alive. With forestland areas, it is important to keep stands open, so that early successional stages can be maintained at the ground level.