I’m just so in love with our English Angora rabbits! I feared caring for Angora Rabbits, grooming to do, and pet dander to deal with, was going to be so hard to manage along with our other animals and daily chores. But after a week with them. They have truly slipped into our routine seamlessly.
I also feel I’ve gotten to know the personalities of our Angora Rabbits a bit better in the last 7 days.
Pepper loves treats (sunflower leaves, henbit, spinach, and lettuce are all we’ve introduced so far) and will bound right up to you to boop your legs for attention. But don’t try to pick her up! The only time she allows it is to be carried from her crate to the outdoor pen.
Snowball will sit in your lap for a bit and tolerates being picked up better than his mate. He is more quiet and gentle in nature but also a pickier eater.
They’ve enjoyed the nice weather we’ve had this week and spend most of the daylight hours in their outdoor pen and we bring them inside around dusk for dinner. This week the weather is supposed to be wet and chilly, so I’ve created a play space for them in the garage. We’ll see how that works out!
I don’t want baby bunnies yet so we have to keep them separated. But they still enjoy each other’s company through the fencing.
Here are my findings for caring for Angora Rabbits. I am no Angora Rabbit expert. I’m just sharing my experience and research from my first week with the rabbits. This post should be used as a spring board to do your own research before purchasing and caring for an Angora Rabbit.
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Grooming Angora Rabbits
We chose to care for Angora rabbits because they have been bred for their wool. Unlike other rabbits whose hides are used after they are dispatched for meat, Angora wool can be harvested from the live rabbits. In fact they can be shorn just like other fiber animals such as sheep and alpacas.
Already, I’ve collected a freezer bag of wool already just from daily brushing. Grooming is an essential part of caring for Angora Rabbits. Their fur is very soft and thick. Friction and the hay they need to eat daily can easily cause mats in the fur. That’s why I brush Pepper, who has thicker hair with more crinkle, at least every other day.
The first few grooming sessions I had the expectation to sit with her until all the mats and tangles were gone. Now I’ve adjusted my expectations and found we both prefer an hour of brushing each day with 10-15 min breaks. Slowly we are working our way to being free from the mats she came with and building her trust in me so I can eventually groom her belly too.
From the research I’ve done on the interwebs, I’ve gathered that while caring for angora rabbits you can shear the English Angoras around 3x a year using scissors or grooming clippers. Some people also pluck their rabbits, but please don’t call to mind the awful videos put out by PETA! This is a painless process of just pulling the already dead and loose hair from your rabbit’s coat.
Pepper is much fluffier and sheds more freely than Snowball. (He has a little bit of Vienna in his pedigree) So Pepper requires more daily grooming. I’ve learned that she prefers to eat some snacks while I pet her head then I can begin to brush her. If my comb hits a snag or mat, I hold the base of the hair and work the tangle towards the ends. Once the mat is close enough to the ends it can either be pulled or cut off.
What to Do With Angora Rabbits Hair
I have no idea if the freezer bag of hair I’ve collected is good quality. My hope is to send it off to a fiber mill for them to spin into yarn. I can’t wait to crochet with the wool from my own rabbits! Eventually I’d love to learn to spin fiber so I can make the yarn myself. You can also use Angora wool to do felting projects, which I may learn someday as well. If you aren’t caring for Angora Rabbits for their wool, you can still keep some of the fur on hand to use for babies. If the mother rabbit doesn’t pull enough of her own fur out when making a nest, you can put some of the wool you’ve saved into the nest to help keep the babies warm.
When we have babies, I’m hoping to keep one that is white like Snowball but fluffy like Pepper. That way I can easily dye the fiber with natural plant dye before crocheting!
Diet For Angora Rabbits
Timothy Hay is the first important part of an Angora Rabbit’s diet. We feed them a generous handful at least 3x a day and use it in they litter boxes. Hay provides them with the roughage needed to prevent wool block. This is basically when, through self-grooming, the rabbit ingests too much wool. Without roughage and fiber the scrape the wool through the intestines, the wool can block the intestine.
This can be fatal.
That’s why I’ve also added papaya to the Angora Rabbits’ diet. The research I’ve done shows that papaya can also help prevent wool block. I bought dried papaya like this, and give them a pinch in their dinner.
For dinner and breakfast I give pellets like these. They should have 1/2 a cup a day, so I break it up into 1/4 in the morning and 1/4 at night. This is all in addition to the treats we give them from the garden. I have an abundance of sunflower volunteers, and these have turned out to be one of their favorites! Fruit and other sugary treats should be kept to a minimum. I save these for after grooming time.
Of course water is also essential for caring for Angora Rabbits, as with any animal. R is helping me out a lot with the care of the rabbits, so I let her choose the water bottles. They each got a bottle similar to this. It is smaller than I would like, but it also means we check on our rabbits multiple times a day to make sure they don’t run out of water. While checking the water levels, we also get a little bunny cuddles and they see our faces and hear our voices. Rabbits are social animals and crave attention!
Exercise for Angora Rabbits
English Angora Rabbits can weigh between 5-7.5 lbs (2.5-3kg) and should have at least 4x their size to have room to exercise and play as well as eat, drink, and use the litter box. I’m waiting until we move to build a permanent hutch for my Angora Rabbits, so they are currently in crates around 2’x3′. But I also have a fenced area outside and a play pen inside for daily exercise and exploration. If you intend for your Angora Rabbit to be a house pet, letting them roam around your bunny-proofed home will be fine. Rabbits can be litter box trained, I have the litter box available for my rabbits but they are not trained by a long shot. Since they are not house pets, it’s not a big priority for me right now.
Caring for Angora Rabbits
Now that I’ve given you some basics on caring for Angora Rabbits, you can begin your own research and get your own! I have so many hopes and ideas for my bunnies, but I’m still learning. If you love hearing about my adventures in caring for Angora rabbits here on my microhomestead, make sure to let me know through a comment or dm on my Instagram (whimsy.roo) so I can keep making content featuring the bun buns!
