looking for pelts!

as a few of you know, i do hide tanning, and it's actually becoming a source of income for me, which is nice! i have a little goal to have a 'bunny museum' of sorts, a collection of pelts from as many colour and coat combinations as i can acquire to showcase the huge diversity in rabbit coat genetics. but there's some coat colours etc that i know i won't be able to produce myself as it's a breed i am not really interested in picking up. so! if any of you breed these breeds and don't mind saving and salting some skins, i'll buy them off of you! also - if you hate throwing your skins away, i might have a more consistent market for them. i sell a lot of pelts to taxidermists and crafters, and they seem to love variety i always sell my growouts' pelts before they're even butchered.

what i'm looking for, at least for my personal project, are rabbit skins that have the head and tails still attached. feet are not necessary. i just want to be able to hang it up and show the majority of the body and how the markings appear. the quality of said markings also isn't that necessary, though of course prettier is nice. but i know a lot of you probably wouldn't be butchering your finest, haha.

i'm looking for:

Silver Fox (all colours)
Champagne d'Argent (body at least mostly silvered, a black head is fine)
Angora (any colour)
English Spot (black)
Satin (any colour/pattern)
Belgian Hare (either colour)



edit: a few things i forgot to mention that's come up in the thread:

salting keeps a skin safer when mailing. freezing requires a lot of insulation that can get pricey, and i live in texas where it's very hot and i'd hate for the skins to defrost and slip in the post. salting them first makes you can use a smaller box, and 3 day shipping is no big deal since the skin is semi-preserved and won't likely being to slip.

how to salt: lay the skin flat, and then cover it liberally with fine salt (stock salt like you feed cattle work perfect, i think noniodized is better but it doesn't matter too much.) rub it in all the nooks and crannies, the pile it up all over. if your skins are tubed, you can just pour the salt in the tube and rub it around. usually after 12-24 hours the salt will be visibly damp. shake it off, reapply salt. after another 12-24 hours the skin is safe to mail, but you can continue this process and make it really stiff if you need to store it for a long time. but i find just a couple days is enough to keep it from slipping while being mailed

how to tube skin a rabbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbJUkxRlaT0 she doesn't go into doing the face in this video, but i will shoot one later and post it

Since I think it'll be usefull considering your post, for anyone who doesn't know how to skin a full pelt I made a video about it posted in this tread http://rabbittalk.com/how-i-skin-my-rabbits-t32140.html

How much do you think it'd take to ship you a skin from canada? I could send you some lionhead/angora some times. Do you rly want just salted? I freeze mine so it'd be easier to send after they've been tanned. I want to use my own pelts, but if it's to add to your collection I have some lionheads/angoras with fun colors as you know.

international shipping depends on the size of the package, so a small box would be maybe $10 for shipping, maybe $20. you might be able to look it up on your postal service's site.

i say salted because it's safer to send a raw skin salted than frozen. i live in texas where it's always hot, so there's a high chance of them going bad and slipping before i get them, unless they're overnighted, which is pretty expensive. if they're already tanned but just not dried ("wet tanned") then being frozen and mailed would be fine since the worst that'd happen is i'd need to rehydrate and rebreak it because it dried in a weird position


this is offtopic kimitsu, but i had a dream last night i wanted a soft-mounted rabbit and in my dream i got on my computer and logged into rabbittalk specifically to talk to you about doing it for me maybe one day when my favourite breeders are old and no longer producing i'll hit you up for some plushies for real, haha

shazza":wgu2f012 said:

this is offtopic kimitsu, but i had a dream last night i wanted a soft-mounted rabbit and in my dream i got on my computer and logged into rabbittalk specifically to talk to you about doing it for me maybe one day when my favourite breeders are old and no longer producing i'll hit you up for some plushies for real, haha

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Haha :lol: I'll be happy to try my best to make them pretty if that ever happens.

I'll look into what skins might be fun to send you, even though I'll probly keep most I'll worry about shipping after XD The ones that are tanned right now are either meat rabbits from my friend or sentimental value freak deaths named bunnies so I'm not giving those away :/

I know this is going to be a stupid question.... but, how does one salt a pelt?

I have a friend who was going to teach me full body skinning and trapper salt curing ... then we were going to go together to get them professionally tanned (for garments) .... but somehow, summer has gotten away from me this year..

Maybe I should make this a priority!!

lay the skin flat, and then cover it liberally with fine salt (stock salt like you feed cattle work perfect, i think noniodized is better but it doesn't matter too much.) rub it in all the nooks and crannies. if your skins are tubed, you can just pour the salt in the tube and rub it around. usually after 12-24 hours the salt will be visibly damp. shake it off, reapply salt. after another 12-24 hours the skin is safe to mail, but you can continue this process and make it really stiff if you need to store it for a long time. but i find just a couple days is enough to keep it from slipping while being mailed

since i forgot to mention, i would also prefer tubed pelts as they hang nicer. usually in skinning a rabbit you'll tube it anyway, at least the way i do it haha

Non-iodised salt is better from my experience. The iodised one tends to form crystals in the skin that are pesky to clean out.
When salting, be rly careful of salting the paws and ears since there's still some meat/cartilage in those area they are more critical to salt. Dont be afraid to use a lot of salt.

How do you tube a pelt? I can keep an eye out on my English Spot herd for a nice pelt for you. Heck I would've tried skinning my buck that died two days ago, but I found out that my fiance had just put him in the trash so he was sitting in a really hot trashcan for a full day before I knew were he went. I don't really want to touch that smelly, gas filled carcass. But I'll definitely watch for a nice one for you. Someone else might get you one sooner though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbJUkxRlaT0

here is a pretty good video and basically how i do it. she cuts the head off and leaves it in the skin, but it's not too difficult to skin the face out, just be careful and cut close to the meat. i actually have to skin a rabbit sometime tonight that i can shoot a video on how to skin the face out.


yeah i don't blame you wanting to touch that, and honestly the pelt probably is too far gone anyway lol. i can wait for any of these, just wanted to put it out there what i'm looking for, and that i will take your pelts and use them

I linked the video of how I skin my rabbits in the second post of this tread. I skin em fully ; head, tail, feet still attached. The way I skin my rabbits keeps em tubed too.

What about dried hides? I NEVER salt hides as its so messy so instead I flesh them really well, nail to a board and dry them. Then store in cedar shavings until I want to use them. They roll up for shipping - I sell a few on Etsy for dog toys - and they are light as well.

dried is fine! a little more work to rehydrate but it's not a big deal. basically i just want to make sure the pelt won't slip fur in the mail - method of preservation isn't really that much of a big deal. i can handle it once it gets to me.

shazza":302vbkcg said:

dried is fine! a little more work to rehydrate but it's not a big deal. basically i just want to make sure the pelt won't slip fur in the mail - method of preservation isn't really that much of a big deal. i can handle it once it gets to me.

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I thought so but as it hadnt come up I thought I would mention it. Its easier for some people to dry rather than salt.