Working life span of an Angora Rabbit?

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GBov

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Have run across the information that the useful fiber life of an Angora is only 2 years and have been wondering about that.

None of my rabbits - albeit not Angora - have ever felt anything other than fluffy, no mater what age, and when they blow their coats they have filled the entire space with fluff so I know they ALWAYS have plenty of fur.

So it this fact or fiction please?

I don't mind eating my 2 year olds if its true but it would be nice to keep my wool/breeder/pet bunnies longer than that. Esp. as some of my meaties hung round usefully for years.
 
PSFAngoras":2hjj2g55 said:
They do coarsen as they age, but I still use the wool from my 6 year old doe.

Good to know, we had an 8 year old New Zealand who gave litters like clockwork her entire life.

How much change is there? Would it be to a degree that its owner use only or a grade % thing if selling?
 
Honestly it would range on a rabbit to rabbit basis. My doe i spoke of started out with a coarser coat, I’ll probably be saving her wool for my use before too long, it’s still softer than sheep wool, but it’s not quite what people think of when they invision Angora. Her brother on the other hand, had a very soft coat and his fur would have been sellable for many more years had he not passed away this spring. I’m breeding towards a little bit softer coated rabbit so they’ll be great woolers no matter their age.
 
There's a buck here who's almost 8 years old and his wool is about as soft as it was when he was a year old. It's not quite as dense as it used to be, but that's actually a good thing since it used to be so dense that it was hard to harvest.
 
Lovely! I am so glad it isn't a hard and fast rule. A relief really as my daughter has hit the age where she wants to keep everybunny . :roll:
 
Well, keeping every bunny can add up after awhile. But if you do start breeding them, perhaps she could keep just one female from each litter? You can frequently house females together which saves on hutch space and lets you feed and water multiple bunnies at the same time. You'll need a couple of males if you get more than four or five females. Although you'd want the male to not be related to the females so you'd probably have to buy him from someone else or make a trade for one of yours.

Have her build the hutches if she wants to keep the bunnies, it's always good to have construction skills.
 
hotzcatz":1c6xrob6 said:
Well, keeping every bunny can add up after awhile. But if you do start breeding them, perhaps she could keep just one female from each litter? You can frequently house females together which saves on hutch space and lets you feed and water multiple bunnies at the same time. You'll need a couple of males if you get more than four or five females. Although you'd want the male to not be related to the females so you'd probably have to buy him from someone else or make a trade for one of yours.

Have her build the hutches if she wants to keep the bunnies, it's always good to have construction skills.

Yes, yes it can! :lol: Mainly she wants to keep SOME of what we breed, instead of now where we keep none.

When we DO get Angoras, it is nice to know that we have a good chance of long term productivity in the herd instead of having to cycle through them. That pleases her no end.
 
Well, it can be a huge learning experience. To be profitable, you need to kinda work it as a business. I'd suggest starting out by writing a description of the specific details you want on your perfect rabbit and then try to breed one of those. Go through your herd and write a description of each rabbit using the same criteria. For the bunnies here, I'll make a list such as:
1. feel of the wool (i.e. 'soft and silky', 'crimpy', 'slick', 'tends to mat', etc.
2. density of the wool
3. conformation of the rabbit
A. head and ears
B. shoulders
C. arch of the back

Etc., etc. Once you have the characteristics for each of the rabbits written down, then you'll be able to see which should be bred to which to get an improved rabbit.

If you get an improved version of a popular breed, you'll be able to sell them as breeding stock or show stock. We mostly do English angora although we now have some Satin and German genes to work with. Not quite sure if they will be incorporated or not, depends on how the Satin and her hybrid son turn out.

It could actually be a great learning experience. There's an opportunity to learn about budgeting and business maths. Cost of acquisition, costs of feed, income from rabbit sales, income from sales of fertilizer, income from yarn made from bunny fluff. She'd learn about keeping a database, planning things out, how the real world doesn't care about your plans so how to revise to get along with what actually happened instead of what was supposed to happen, how to merchandise and sell things. How to spin, how to knit, there's just tons of things folks can learn by having a few fuzzy bunnies around.
 
All three of my guys know all about money in versus money out with all kinds of livestock and can't wait, if I pull my next magic trick off, to have a small Angora business of their very own. One where they call all the shots, do all the work and get ALL THE MONEY!!! Bless, we shall see how long the fire lasts once they actually get stuck in. :D

Well, the younger two do, my eldest is going to be the next big Utube gamer and never have to do anything else. :roll: A kid can dream eh? :lol:
 
The bunnies here have been quite profitable, although most of the profit is from having access to sell yarn at retail prices. Sales of young bunnies pays for the basic herd maintenance and the yarn and things made from the yarn are where the bottom line does it's most improvement. We usually like to go on a cruise when the bunnies have done well so next month we're going on a sea cruise through the Panama canal. There's already been an Alaska cruise, and Alaska cruise/tour (that one has a land based tour as part of the whole cruise), a Caribbean cruise and now the Panama canal. Hopefully the bunnies will be very busy so we can rent a narrow boat and cruise canals in England for a month or so in a couple of years.

There's a pedigree program called 'Kintracks' which is very useful for tracking expenses as well as pedigrees.
 
Thank You Hotzcatz! :D Good to know indeed! Esp. as I plan to upscale to a small business sized herd when we get free.
 
You could start small and work out the kinks so by the time you're ready for a business sized herd, you'll have more experience with what works in your area. We started with two and went from there although it took a couple of years to where it got business like.
 
Good advice and I will start small once we get free to live where we want to. It will be a brand new learning curve. :lol:

Just keeping the dream alive for now! ;)
 
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