Starting With A Bare Hare
Topic: Coat Care 101

Folks who rescue adult angoras are often thrilled with the lushness of the coat and call or write me to ask how to care for it. Sometimes the coat is in great shape, but with rescues, often it is not. They mention it is thick and hard to run their hands through and although bunny's face is matted, they can't WAIT to spin the coat.

It is my job to let them down easily as this is not a coat they will be spinning. Many times it is a struggle to get the coat off the rabbit and will take hours/weeks of careful clipping. They are discouraged and disappointed to hear this, and I suggest some reading about coat care and a revaluation of their expectations.

But, all is not lost, as true angora lovers may be born at this point.

To give yourself and your bunny the BEST coat possible, you need to start at Bare Hare level. The actual clipping job for SPINNABLE fiber will be outlined at the end of this series, but get the entire coat off your rabbit any way you can. I include Emergency Coat Removal info here.

EMERGENCY COAT REMOVAL
This will take a few sessions, so do not obsess with getting it all off at once. While you are removing this coat, it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you feed your bunny COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF HAY. I suggest you line the entire cage with fresh hay each morning and expect bunny to eat most of it each night. Any loose fiber that remains after a grooming session will be licked off by the rabbit, and there must be hay in his gut to help move this through his digestive system.

Your rabbit probably does not know you well yet (or you her). You may not be comfortable with handling her. One of the easiest ways to keep your bunny calm is to use a towel and wrap up as much of him/her as you can, exposing just the parts you need to clip down. When you flatten the long ears of an angora rabbit and hold them down, she will hold still. An old rabbit raiser taught me that "When you have the ears, you have the rabbit". So, work on this at every session. Flatten her ears, and wrap her head with ears pinned to her back. This will help keep her still.

I like to sing to my rabbits. Or hum. Or play some classical/new age music. It helps keep both of you calm. One of the nicest things about handling angora rabbits is the peace they offer. Take advantage of this from Day 1. Tell her how pretty she is and how much better she'll feel when the mats come off (and she will).

Get a 5" pair of sharp scissors with as blunt of an end as you can find/make. Put them near you. Sit on the floor with bunny in your lap OR on a low stool so your knees are higher than your lap. You want your legs to be comfortable for 30-45 minutes, so take the time to make sure they remain so. Put bunny in your lap and cuddle for 3 or 4 minutes minimum. Do this EVERY TIME!

Decide which section of the coat to tackle. Start with her head and clip bad looking things off. With your opposite hand, pull up on fur you want to clip, making sure you are an inch above her skin. Don't worry about getting down to her skin level, just take off what you can and make the coat shorter. You will find that if you probe any mat with your thumb and index finger, you can wiggle down around the edges and feel where the skin is underneath the mat. So clip off the surface of the mat, and keep feeling down to where her skin is to remind your scissors where everything is.

Make short snips with your scissors. Maybe an inch long. Maybe two. I have seen people work with 9" shears and accidents happen more. With 5" scissors, it may take longer, but there are fewer mishaps.

Rabbits are territorial about their whiskers and the sides of their faces (along with their chins). You will have some resistance when you go after these spots. Turn bunny away from you and go in from behind while talking/singing the whole time. If you can put a hand on top of their heads while you do this it will help. An assistant will make this easier.

Proceed over her entire body this way, but don't stress bunny OR yourself by doing more than 30-45 minutes at a time. Take a potty break (both of you) if you want to continue past that time.

When you get to the tail/genitals, you will want to abandon everything. I know it's hard. Do this end when you are clear headed and will have no distractions. Wrap up bunny and lay her on her side in your lap, keeping one elbow down along her side so her weight is off her feet. Find her tail, and start clipping carefully to expose it (it is surprisingly long). Trim all around it. Turn bunny so her stomach faces up and trim carefully and slowly between her back legs and up her stomach. Keep feeling for skin so you know where you are. If you have a guy, watch for guy parts and trim around them.

Before you end any session, use a slicker brush to collect as much half-cut fur as you can from any edges/areas. Then try not to look at your funny bunny and just let him munch on hay until you can find time for another session. Keep rabbit food at a minimum and hay at an maximum for the ENTIRE TIME you are working on removing the coat.

Shearing Help Is On The Way

2006 is the year when I will organize my thoughts and directions to post more shearing information here on the blog. Many new owners panic when they think of that first shearing session with their angoras, and to that end I will try to help. The coats of my Bunny Barn crowd are short right now and I won't clip them again until the end of May if all goes well (and the weather allows!), but coat care starts NOW, right after a Bare Hare is made.

Immediately after a clipping, an angora is lighter and leaner, but will be out of sorts for a day while adjusting to her new weight, ability to see clearly, and a colder environment. Since you have handled bunny for over an hour, your scent is everywhere, and the first thing that needs to happen is to groom it off. Rabbits in the wild are at the bottom of the food chain and they know it. They protect themselves by remaining as scent free as possible. Bunny will lick herself from tail to toe to clean off any trace of human smell. It is very important to provide roughage for your rabbit to eat at this point, to adhere to any fiber traces ingested that might like to plug up her intestinal plumbing. Providing an armful of hay that can be consumed in 12 hours will help with this process. You can safely withhold pelleted feed at this point, as the hay will provide exactly what she needs for the next day.

When your bunny has very short coat, he/she is very happy and quite hungry. You will see euphoric jumps and hops and LOTS of energy if all is well with your rabbit. Once the first 24 hours has passed, and all the hay is gone, check for good dropping sizes. Once you see that all things are moving right along as they should, do not hesitate to feed a little more than you normally do.

How much to feed? For newly shorn rabbits, I would feed winter rations of my angora feed mix. On nights predicted to be really cold, I sometimes fully double the summer rations. Rabbits in short coat need to eat to keep warm if they are kept outside like mine.

Next time: all about fur mites/wool mites and short coats.

A Merry Shearing
Topic: shearings

Meet Merry. She hails from Janet Gruber and traveled here last fall to join the herd. Merry is a silver marten pattern colored angora, which is pretty much of an unknown in the angora world. Her background includes some hefty fiber producing lines from Wiley, Samson, I See Spots and Greenberry. Since I am working on better black color, I will try her genetics mixed in with my herd to see if they will help.

Her only downfall, and it really isn't one, is that she does shed, which means I have to watch her more for wool block. I have two barns full of German crossed angoras who don't shed at all, not even one hair, between clippings, so this is a new slant.

But, I'll accept this!

She is a delight! Her health is outstanding. I am liking her more and more as time passes. In this picture she is 11 months old and this is her first clip here. She yielded 6.9 ounces of fiber with 1 ounce of waste, and weighs in at 9# 11oz.

She, however, had no idea what rabbits are expected to "endure" here:

Shearing Week
Topic: shearings

Liebchen is so ready for a haircut.

In spite of cold temperatures, angora coats must come off here when they get over 4". Believe it or not, a well groomed 1" coat, free of matts and tangles is probably warmer than a 5" mass of heavy fiber on a rabbit. As long as angoras are out of wind and draft, they can keep very warm with a good air space around them even in single digit temps.

I plan for a week of shearing when temps stay in the 20's at night, and above freezing during the day. And I make sure that I can put the rabbits in some sun right after their coats come off. Also, for the next 5 days, I like to put a shirt on them at night, as well as half a bale of hay in their cage so they can burrow under it if they want.

So, today I will start. I have 13 to shear, and if I pace myself doing 3 a day, taking off a day or two for teaching, I'll be done by next weekend. The cleanup takes hours and since this is such a messy business, I'll get out a set of angora work clothes to wear every day until I am done.

January notes

The first month of the year is a time of quiet endurance for the Bunny Barn crowd. It is generally cold and dark and my barn time is spent keeping everybunny supplied with drinking water. I stock up the feed and hay supply in December and hope I can make it through to the end of February before I have to bring in new supplies. I wait for a thaw to shovel manure out from under the cages and can usually count on a day or two of 34* weather to clip toenails and trim butts at least once in the month.

Here it is January 11 and the whole week ahead is predicted to be above freezing. This is almost unheard of! Yesterday I shoveled manure, and today I will clean cages and on Thursday it looks like I will be able to trim toenails...all in the same week.

The boys are full of it with these temperatures. I got sprayed once while I was cleaning (Neo has the most testosterone of all of them). I opened all the windows yesterday and the barns are now much brighter.

We are enjoying this January thaw. After the frigid December we had, this feels like spring!

Shearing scissors
Topic: shearings

One of the main questions I get from new angora rabbit owners is what kind of scissors or shears to use when harvesting wool from their bunny. I have been to a few workshops where all sorts of equipment was used and saw some of what others have come up with. The bottom line is, use whatever is comfortable for you to hold, and keeps a good sharp edge that you can replace when you need to. Electric shears are fabulously efficient if you get the right blades for them; if the motor stays cool enough so you can hold them for awhile and if you get your rabbits used to the sound. Not everyone can afford the hundreds of dollars for the good ones, though.

With my little herd of under 20 adults, for me the 5" scissor with short tips has come to be my staple piece of equipment. I have $45 Fiskars in that length and they work great, but I also have $9 embroidery scissors that work equally as well. The benefit of the $9 scissors is that I can replace them every year and feel very good about it, relegating the old (I write the date I started using them in permanent marker on the handles) ones to general household use.

These scissors I use are extremely easy to handle. The short ends keep the area about to be cut very small, with the likelihood one will snip skin by mistake almost nonexistent. I keep them in stock at Countrywool.

Bitter cold

This December will probably go on record as being the one of the coldest. With November being one of the warmest, the shock is great for all creatures living outside.

Each Monday I try to spend time in the barns hanging out with everyone, checking toenails, eyes, fur condition, etc., and doing a little cleanup. The past 3 Mondays have been inhospitable. Yesterday I mixed rabbit food and by the time I was done, I was thoroughly frozen.

There have been years when water did not freeze until December 10. This is not one of them.

So, I have started using flax seed a little earlier than I normally do.

Flax is one of the unsung heroes for rabbits. High in protein and fat, it also high in Omega 3 fatty acids and lignans. When I first started raising angoras, I had a doe who developed mammary tumors. After doing some research, I fed her flax seed in high doses for 3 weeks and her tumors shrank. (She went on to live another year). When I was raising English angoras and had to deal with molting, flax with its high fat content is something that helped prevent and, if necessary, recover from wool block.

So, now I use it when I can with them. Winter is a good season to offer it, as they need the extra calories. Too much and droppings get messy, so use a 1/2 tsp measure and feed only one a day to see how it goes.

Yesterday afternoon I gave everyone a spoon of flax seed in their bowls while I was out in the barns. By feeding time at dusk, all of them had cleaned their bowls. Even the younger junior bunnies who are living through their first winter and have not tasted it before.

(Almost) Cold Weather In The Barn
Topic: Feeding

Last week saw two days that stayed below freezing, and water bottles froze for the first time this season.

Like sheep wool producers who are serious about the fineness of the fleeces their sheep produce, and the amount of fat on their bodies, I feed my herd to keep them on the lean side. They get barely 3/4 cup of the 16% protein feed mix I use. I keep the rabbits a lighter weight through the summer and fall, but when the temps start to dip down, I start changing my feeding routine.

It always amazes me how easy it is to overfeed rabbits, even while using a measuring scoop. So over time, I have come to appreciate the "mounding syndrome" inherent in my feeding style. I use a 1/3 cup measuring scoop for the summer and fall, and when the first frozen water bottle appears, I exchange it for a 1/2 cup scoop. This I feed twice a day, and using the "big scoop" theory, they then get about 1 1/3 cups of feed a day. This will add weight to their bodies in as little as two weeks. This extra weight will help them in the cold temps that are coming.

But, when serious cold weather moves in next month, not only will they get that extra feed, they get a Tablespoon of oats/flax seed at night on top of everything. More fat calories in the flax seed and extra warming carbs in the oats. They will burn it off to keep warm. And, they love it.

Angora Spinning Retreat Plans
Topic: Spinning Retreats

Next Fall, Countrywool will host its first ever Angora Retreat that is open to both owners AND their rabbits. I have just gotten back from previewing the location for the gathering, and am very pleased that we, the rabbits and our spinning classes will all have plenty of room to work. This event will provide an opportunity for folks to learn new things about handling their rabbits as well as the fiber they produce. I am really excited about this Retreat.

We will spend from 2 pm Friday through 11 am Sunday together with our rabbits. We will shear them, clip toenails, check eyes/feet/ears and spend time on feed quality and routines. Then we will card, wheel spin, drop spindle spin, ply and sample widely differing angora yarns for the rest of the weekend. The Winterclove Inn will provide us with our meals and rooms so we may focus totally on practicing new skills.

There is even a provision to rent-a-bunny as well as a spinning wheel for the weekend!

Now that my Fall teaching schedule is calming down (a bit) I have looked at the planning sequence for this retreat and see benefits to having folks plan their bunny's coat care and harvest for a September 15, 2006, clip. To that end, I encourage folks who are considering coming to make their plans with me by April 15, 2006, so that they may be added to the Retreat newsletter list. This list will send reminders and information about coat care in a timely fashion so that everybunny coming is on the same page.

Blending Bunny

I spent all day yesterday outside with the bunnies, clipping toenails, trimming nether parts, dosing with ivermectin and flea powder, and loving them up. Rabbits are incredibly soft to hold and cuddle. My crew all have 2 week to 1 month coats, so they are getting softer and rounder by the day. The weather was delightfully balmy and I totally enjoyed myself. These are the kinds of days when all goes well and I am thankful for my life and my work.

The weather WAS chilly a week or so ago, and I spent time indoors blending Bunny and Sheep to make some new color combinations for the Bunnywool Mitten Kits I keep in stock. I love spinning wool and angora blends. They behave beautifully in your hands and are wonderful to wear against your skin.