Bunny Day

I feel like I've been taking care of animals all day, but then I have been taking care of animals all day. If people only knew... It was time to get the angora off the bunnies, so I spent a couple of hours sitting on a cow water dish, still attached to the stanchion, clipping bunnies. There is a window of opportunity with angora rabbits, where the fiber is ready to come out. You had better get it out at that time or the fibers will mat together and all your hard work will be for naught. I clipped 6 or 7 rabbits and got a large grocery bag full, mashed down. Most of it went right in the dye pot. I need another color for the first big run I'll be sending to the mill soon. The angora is costly and labor intensive, but sets my roving apart from other artists, I think. I don't put a lot in a run, maybe 10 - 15%. Once or twice I blended alpaca with angora but the yarn from it was very dense and too warm. Wool is the best - so light and airy, yet warm and cozy. A little angora added makes it softer and warmer. It's hard work taking care of all the bunnies. They are watered twice a day and fed once, along with hay to munch on. Sheep, goats and chickens can be fed collectively, but bunnies are fed individually. Water bottles freeze and must be replaced with bowls in the winter. Angora rabbits don't require shots, but they do need a wormer to control the mites that love to live in the fiber. I've always had bunnies it seems. My first rabbits were New Zealand Reds and I raised them as a member of the Somerset Cottontails 4-H club in New Jersey. Years later I saw a woman spinning from a rabbit at the Jockey Hollow area of the Morristown National Historical Park I lived next to. I had to have one and started with English Angoras. One became two and three and four. The neighbors in my fancy development were not amused. One called the Board of Health and two official cars pulled up. Low and behold, there was an old zoning law still on the books that said a person could have X number of square feet of livestock cages on their property, and my nifty custom built cages fit that criteria. So I kept my bunnies. I've carried them to the several moves I've made before we all came to rest on this farm. May we never move.