In my last posts, I've been all about chickens. Today, I want to talk about another option....rabbits. Rabbits make an awesome addition to a small backyard farm. Like chickens, they have several uses. I don't like eating rabbit, but many people do, so you could raise meat rabbits such as the California Rex. But today, I'm going to talk about raising rabbits for fur/wool that you can use to crotchet or you can sell the fur for extra cash on Etsy. You could also use the wool for a stuffing or filling for a pillow or doll. The Angora rabbit (English, French, German, and Satin) is the rabbit that I currently raise. I have an English Angora and a French Angora. Every 3 months or whenever their fur is 3+ inches long, I harvest the wool. Then I card the wool and spin it using a drop spindle. There are a ton of YouTube videos showing how you do this. I plan on making my own videos soon, but until then, I'll post a few on here for you at the bottom of this post.
I cut the wool with scissors, because it's easier to me, and I can do with the rabbits sitting in my lap or on a table. This causes no harm to the rabbits and my rabbits enjoy the haircut especially in the summertime. You can usually tell when the wool is ready to harvest because it will start coming out. If you start seeing loose hairs that you can easily pull out, then it's generally time to harvest. After cutting the wool, you card it. Buy Ashford Classic Wool Hand Carders
We finally got the fence up. We also got 5 more chickens from a friend. We got 3 White Leghorns and 2 Barred Plymouth Rock Bantams. We decided to go ahead and move all the chickens over there and let them wake up together. That way it would be a new area to all of the chickens, and they could figure out their new pecking order at daylight. We went ahead and moved our pullets over to the new area first and kept the new chickens separated until it got dark. Then we picked the new chickens up and moved them into the coop. The next morning, we went ahead and let them all out together to see if they were going to get along.
They ended up forming two cliques. The new chickens stayed together and the pullets stayed together with the rooster showing them all that he was the boss. The rooster mainly stays with the pullets and is very protective of them. If the new chickens get near the pullets, he runs them off. He roosts with the pullets, and the new chickens roost together. And, I have seen no fighting (other than the first day), so that's awesome! It seems like one of the White Leghorns is wanting to join the pullet clique, so I'll have to wait and see how that turns out.
Excuse the mess. We will be moving this tin soon. We plan to use it on other side of carport later.
The last time I wrote, I told you that we were working on a new coop. We got it mostly finished. We still need to put up some nesting boxes and put fence up for their running area, which will have to wait until next weekend. Gotta work man.....😃
Here is where we started.
and here is where we ended.
We used an old, broken piece of privacy fence to make a door. We still need to add a spring to the door so it'll shut by itself.
I plan on painting the tin, but that'll have to wait until spring. I really miss warm weather. I'm not an indoors person, so this cold weather has me in a funk. It has gotten cold earlier this year, so hopefully, spring will come earlier as well. Every year, I have daffodils that come up outside my kitchen window, and they let me know spring will be here soon. No matter how cold, they come up about 3 weeks before warm weather. They are such a blessing.
