bryer rabbit":3gyv8hla said:
Hello all! My name is Barry and my wife and I are small organic veggie farmers in the smoky mountains. We are looking into raising angora for wool as a source of farm income. Looking to maybe keep 50 rabbits total. I stumbled across Angoras while researching meat rabbits. Alas I am kind of a softy and couldn't bring myself to send a 1000 bunnies to slaughter every year. I have some questions if y'all could help.
1. Is there much demand for pure angora yarn or would it be better to blend with something like merino?
2. How difficult is it to spin pure angora into yarn?
3. What weights of yarn are popular for angora?
4. Anyone in the angora business have any tips or wisdom to share?
Hey Barry, welcome to the site.
Here is some info/advice for you. Before I get to your specific questions here is some general advice. Start small, start small, start small. It is better to start with a few rabbits, maybe 1-5, and scale up to your maximum production (which probably would be way less than 50 rabbits) than it is to get 50 rabbits off the bat (I don't know if its even possible to get that many or even 10+ right away). Angoras are a lot of work and a heard of 50 would be a full time job for one person, maybe even two people. A fiber operation is way different than a meat operation. Read as many posts as you can on the site, even the ones that don't seem that relevant right away, you'll probably find the answer to a problem you weren't even expecting.
As for caring for angoras, in addition to the normal feeding, cleaning, health checks you now have grooming to worry about. You'll need to groom every so often so the rabbits do not get mats in their fur. You'll spend 5-20 minutes per rabbit grooming, depending on your equipment, skill level, how often you groom, etc. Depending on the breed and how often you harvest; you will get 16+ oz of wool per year. Most likely you'll harvest 4 times a year and get 4-5 oz per harvest.
The different breeds require different techniques for harvesting. Some you have to shear, some you can "pluck the wool" off the rabbit (or shear).
If you're looking for an extra revenue stream for your farm you might be looking in the wrong place. It is possible to turn a profit selling angora wool (and the rabbits themselves to people looking to raise angoras) however the margins are thin and you need to be quite on top of things. Personally, I find that the fiber aspect "defrays the cost of rabbit ownership" rather than provides an income.
1) There is always a demand for angora fiber. If you start small you can better gauge how much of a market you are able to address. You can sell locally, you can sell online through your own website, you can sell on sites like Etsy. Last time I checked (maybe a month or so ago) the average price was around $7-9 per oz for the unspun wool. Some charge more, some less.
You have the option to spin the yarn yourself, that will raise the price. You can keep it pure or blend it with most types of wool. While there is a market for spun wool, some customers like the raw stuff: to spin their own wool, dye the wool a specific color, perhaps due to allergies they can't blend with wool and want 100% angora (which is the particular issue for the person who gets my wool).
So you have multiple options on what you can actually sell.
2) There is more effort required to spin pure angora into yarn than to blend it. I don't spin so I can't say from first hand experience; but I've read a lot on the subject. I've read it is easier to spin a blend of sheep's wool and angora wool than pure angora, something to do with the physical properties of the angora wool itself. However it is not impossible and once you learn "the right touch" to spinning pure angora yarn you pretty much have the skill set.
Welcome and best of luck! <br /><br /> __________ Mon Aug 29, 2016 11:59 am __________ <br /><br />
SixGun":3gyv8hla said:
Also, and perhaps others can help, but I've never been able to figure out a good meat / fiber system for Angoras. To keep the best fiber, you want them to be 6 months old or more, but, you wouldn't want to grow out every kit to that age just to gather the fiber and then send them to market. Even if you butchered yourself, which I do with my meat rabbits, the food to meat ratio just couldn't be that great, when you're not taking them as fryers, but growing them out to the more European roaster range. I suppose you could be butchering at fryer weight, but then to lose all that potential amazing fiber. Like I said, I can't puzzle it out but would love for someone to correct me because I know people say the Angora can be used as a meat rabbit.
Hey SixGuns just thought I'd chime in. There really isn't a good meat/fiber system out there. It pretty much is one or the other. A fiber rabbit's wool tends to be worth more than the meat itself, especially over the lifetime of the rabbit. The meat/fiber system that kind works is to have the wool operation and breed the rabbits for sale as well. Any kits that aren't sold, aren't worth keeping, and aren't replacements for your current stock get processed. It isn't so much a meat operation, more of a meat is a potential result from your wool operation.