This is our REW buck, Hillside Aster. He's kinda opinionated sometimes but has very lovely wool. He's a bucky kinda buck, too, and manages to find dirt on occasion. He really should have been an agouti or some other kind of colored bunny so the dirt wouldn't show up.
Aster would not get along with another buck, sometimes he's not even happy with the bun on the other side of the wire. There haven't been any pissing contests, although I think that's just because they're too lazy.
This is Hillside Phineas Phogge when he had a chocolate mask during one of his coats. Next time it grew out, he was back to lilac all over. For some completely unknown reason, other bucks will find ways to wiggle into Phin's space and hang out with Phin. No fights, no pissing, no hassles. Two intact adult bucks happily sharing space. I have no idea why. I've tried moving Phin out of the space and giving it to the visiting buck but then the other buck will just figure out a way to wiggle back over to Phin's space. I've put a different buck next to Phin just to find that buck finding a way to go visit with Phin. I haven't a clue why they do that.
Phin is a son of Grinlow's Dozer who had the most mellow temperament of any buck we've pretty much ever had here. Dozer was bred to a REW daughter in order to create Phin since I wanted to concentrate the Dozer lines into the replacement buck for Dozer when the Dozemiester was getting old. Doze was a chocolate and bred to a REW they produced lilac offspring so we kept the best buck to replace Dozer.
Aster is the son of Phineas, although his dam is an opinionated black doe so Aster seems to get his attitude from his dam.
The buns here are fed high protein pellets mixed with rolled barley and some black oil sunflower seeds. They get as much pellets as they can eat in about a half hour along with lots of fresh ti leaf, mulberry leaves, grasses, dandelions, etc., etc. Hay is too expensive in Hawaii, it's about $40 a small bale which then mildews before it can all be used so they don't get hay.
They get a haircut about every three months and provide anywhere from several to six ounces of good clean spinnable wool each harvest. I'm finding that the denser coats which provide more fiber are also harder to shear since it's almost too dense to get the scissors into. No hope for electric clippers on the really dense coats. A more open flowing coat is much quicker to shear, even using scissors instead of the clippers.
