Haircuts!

So the heat prompted me to come home from working at the library today and give everyone a haircut!

The girls are not the most cooperative of hair salon clients.  Drew is relaxing in the background because they took a lot of convincing to sit still, turn over and let me at them with the child safety scissors.  I saved a bunch of the hair.

Antonio was, once again, far more relaxed and accepting of his haircut.  I didn't snap a picture of him because I got tired by the end of the session but he was even calm when I was trimming away mats from around his manly parts. :-)

Drew was surprised to see how much chocolate is in Cherry's wool when it is trimmed back because the guard hairs are so white.

Compare that to the "before" photo.

Hopefully, they all feel a little cooler now.

Health update

We weighed everyone on the new scale today.  Cherry weighed in at 5 lb., 8 oz.; Lizzie weighed 5 lb., 3 oz.; and Antonio weighs 5 lb., 10 oz.  The girls have really caught up!  Remember that box of Antonio's wool that I posted earlier?

We completely filled it and I weighed it. 1 oz.  That's right, you read it correctly, 1 oz.  It filled a box  that is 12" x 10" x 4" and it barely tipped the scale.  Crazy!  I'm giving it to a co-worker that does handspinning to experiment with.  We're still learning about harvesting and separating the wool so I just wanted someone to play around with it and tell us how it works out.

New tools!

We got our latest order from KW Cages this week.  A new scale so we can weigh our bunnies and our wool, a blower to groom them with, and a tattoo kit for new babies in the fall.  It was plenty warm out today but the rabbits needed grooming so we tried out the new blower.

The girls seemed to like it right away so I just held them on Drew's lap while he blew out all the hay and debris from their wool.  Antonio was another story so I held him while Drew blew him out.  I had Drew take a picture.

It's pretty powerful and they looked good when we were done.  Unfortunately, Antonio had matted up quite a bit on his underside so I spent 20 minutes working out mats.  At first, he was opposed to being on his back, but eventually he relaxed and lay quietly.  It was pretty bad but I got a new tool!  I read about it on another rabbit owner's website.  It's a Safari Mat Remover for dogs and, boy, does it work slick.

It's got curved blades and you can just work it into the mat, turn it, and gently pull it apart.  There was quite a bit of wool debris when we were finished.

Yesterday, I planted a few containers with herbs and greens for the bunnies, in hopes of supplementing what we buy.

After planting two kinds of parsley, mustard, and a mesclun lettuce variety pack, I hosed down the poop trays and swept out the enclosure.  A job well done, which deserved a beer.  Which I had, sitting in that reclining lawn chair you can see in the background. :-)

We got our second shipment of red wigglers.  The first batch died off, probably because the nights were so cold.  I installed the new ones and hope that they will start composting the rabbit droppings.  Lunsford's Fluffy Bunnies Garden Gold!

Mother's Day

We spent the afternoon outside with all the animals, just hanging out.

It was fairly hot and humid so everyone was taking it easy.  Otis, of course, had to stay on the outside of the kennel, but Milo is allowed to interact with the rabbits.  It was Milo's first time in the kennel, on the grass, so he really wasn't all that interested in the rabbits anyway.

The girls get to play with each other, but Antonio has to play by himself, so I think a little time with Milo and Otis hanging around was nice for him.

It's hard to see the truly bad haircut I gave Antonio yesterday while experimenting with blunt-tip children's scissors.  Sure the YouTube video says it is perfectly easy but I could have chewed the hair off faster and with more accuracy.  Geez!

Hot in the City!

Good lord!  It got so hot, so fast!  The rabbits were panting and laid out in their cages by noon.  I put their ceramic tiles from the freezer in their cages and then filled and put the plastic water bottles we had been saving into the freezer.  Victor set up fans and called me at work so I could pick up some more box fans.

I also picked up a dorm-size refrigerator for their veggies.  In addition, Dean came by today and put together our rabbit kennel, complete with tarp on the top to ward off flying predators (take that, hawks!) so we have some pretty luxe accommodations for everybody.

They loved sniffing the grass and running around on the soft ground while we unboxed all the new appliances.

Plucking Wool

Antonio is molting so we started plucking him today.  I am set to head out to see Erica at Emancipation Acres in a few weeks to learn shearing with clippers but for now we are plucking with the help of a stripper comb that is used on double-coated dogs. 

It helps us get a better grip on the wool as I have past issues with carpal tunnel syndrome and Drew has some fine motor control issues.  It worked great!

It's not as if we are anywhere near done, though.  Antonio just got tired of sitting still.

As you can see, he still has plenty of wool left.  We'll work on it some more tomorrow.  It is just as well as our nights are still pretty cold.



How We Got Started

So my son, Drew, and I decided to try our hand at raising French Angora rabbits.  I had read about Angora rabbits being raised for their wool in a farm memoir by Jenna Woginrich, Barnheart, and I thought, "Wouldn't that be a really cool job for Drew."  I sat down with Drew and told him that, because he was 17 years old and only had 1 1/2 years of school left, he needed to think about what he would do for work.  That he couldn't just sit around the house, watching TV and playing video games and taking our pug, Otis, for walks.  He needed to do something productive. 

I told him that I had an idea, that he would be able to work with animals, he wouldn't have to answer a lot of questions, he could wear what he wanted to, and he could do it from home.  These are all really important to Drew.  Because he is autistic, his social skills development is not on par with his age-peers.  Questions are particularly hard for him, both asking them and answering them.  His sensory issues make it difficult, if not impossible, for him to wear long sleeves or anything that isn't soft cotton.  He is also an introvert.  I know that because I have known extraverted autistic people as well and the differences between them and Drew are pretty clear on that scale.  Sometimes people forget that autistic people have personality characteristics that are separate from their diagnosis.

I told him that we could get some rabbits and that I would show him some photos and videos online of my idea of raising Angora rabbits for their wool.  We have a pretty healthy fiber community in our area and I thought we could probably connect with them as well as sell on Etsy or something like that.  I didn't think we were going to get rich or even "make a living."  I just thought that framing it as a business rather than a hobby and at least trying to break even was an important goal.  We'll see what happens.