Just wondering if there is a readily available market, or if it like the $10,000 alpacas of years gone by. Everyone "knows someone" that was selling them for that much, but no first hand experience.

Anyone here sell more than an ounce or two a year?

Thanks

John

I do. REgular customers now, mainly. I'm slowing down with it because I don't have time, but it's quite do-able. Start by going to the local knitting yarn place and see if they have people who spin. THEN ask if you can put up an adversitment (or leave your card) for angora wool to spin.

Next step is offering on Craig's list. You'll be surprised at the number of responses you get if you're near a city. If you can supply those folks at a decent price, you'd be surprised at the amount of business you'll get from word of mouth.

You can either do the above, or you can put up a website and try to get some online traffic. The other thing to do is find a farmer's market where you can set up a booth. have plenty of wool already in baggies or in clamshell clear boxes. Already weighed out at 1oz, 2oz. (good idea to have a scale there with you for someone who wants to double check the weights) Prices on a good looking(professional looking) card. have plenty of business cards to hand out, complete with your name, email, website if you have one.

Unlikely you'll get rich on it, but it can pay for feed and setup costs plus a little extra.

You can mail 1 oz of wool in an envelope..and 1 oz goes a LONG way for a spinner.

__________ Sun Apr 24, 2011 10:43 am __________

Another idea with the angoras is to raise kits for sale to spinners. MANY spinners like to have their own rabbits. Prepare a sheet with grooming instructions, and requirements. Offer your rabbits as "woolers - for hand spinning fiber". I breed french/english specifically FOR spinning. short coat? cull. aggressive? cull. too many guard hairs? cull. not enough guard hairs? cull (I like the guard hairs because they keep t he coat from matting so badly)

I've found that the whites sell better than the colored rabbits. Himalayan marked sells even better than REWs tho.

I keep my price low ($20 each) and can't keep up with demand. 2 10week old kits pay for the feed for the entire litter.

Anntann, that sounds like a whole lot of fun...someday, when I am not up to my eyeballs in other projects I would love to do it! Man I better live to be 150, I have easily that many "someday" projects lined up.

I put up an add on Craigslist a few days ago for "angora kits, 10weeks old, English/French crosses, bred for spinning wool, REW and Himilayan coloring (all white fiber), $20 each " and sold out within hours. (I had 10 of them) AND I have an order for 4 more from the next litter.

That litter just paid for the feed for the entire rabbitry for the month. I'm going to put 4 French angoras up in a couple of weeks at $50 each and fully expect them to sell as quickly.

You DO have to have a market in the area, tho. Living near a city that you regularly drive to is a plus. Saves on transport costs and gives you a good, broad market.

Your post made me join the forum and come out from lurking. I can assure you that if you got an alpaca for $10K a few years ago, that was a real bargain. Since the economy tanked, you can find farms that are willing to take price cuts on their herd. We currently don't have a sales list. Our start up herd in 2007 was $36K for 2 pregnant females and a free gelding. That was a good price since one of them was from a herd dispersal and we still paid $11k for her. At that time I was seeing alpacas being advertised upwards of $50k. Right now what's going on is some people getting out of the business due to losing their farms in the slump we are having. That puts low cost animals on the market. Alpaca is a luxury fiber and it cost a lot of money to keep them up throughout the year and then we have shearing cost. I sell my fiber at an average of $4 per ounce, more if it's a finished product.