Yes, we have another new addition to our family…our farmyard that is…meet Daisy. She’s an angora rabbit. We aren’t quite sure what breed yet, still trying to figure it out. Another homeschooling family had posted on our homeschool loop that they were giving Daisy away…and I being the softie that I am responded saying we’d love to take her! We still had rabbit food and the children loved the bunnies and this bunny was FREE! So I had to take her. Come to find out a farm not too far from us who breed angora rabbits charge $200 for a rabbit. Whooeee! Angora rabbits provide fiber and Daisy is in need of getting clipped as you will soon see from the photos taken on September 14th, the day we got her. She came all matted and that was the biggest reason the family was giving her away because they didn’t have the time to keep up with her grooming.

So far our girls are doing wonderfully grooming her, let’s hope it continues because Daisy’s health depends on it. Since angora rabbit fur gets so long they are prone to what is called “wool block”. This is when the rabbit cannot eat due to a fur ball being stuck in their throat. This can be prevented by giving the rabbit a piece of fresh pineapple or papaya on a daily basis. We are not sure how the fruit prevents it but my daughter read about it and we’ve started giving her pineapple after noticing her BMs (bowel movements or rabbit poop) were strung together with hair, which is/or can be a sign of wool block.

The photo above is of the fur the girls cut off of Daisy during their first grooming session. The photo below is how she looked after the fact….mucho better.

We are looking into selling or using her fur to knit with, but have to learn how to go about doing it first. We attended a free session with a spinners guild last Thursday and plan to attend their next meeting in October, will miss November and pick it back up in December to learn more about fiber, spinning and to meet others doing the same thing.

Even Daisy gets to enjoy the fresh grass since we recycled old pieces of a mini greenhouse we had a couple of years ago and created a play yard for her.

She’s still getting acclimated to all the children but we think she’s going to be a great addition to our farm. She’s huge by the way, if you couldn’t tell from the photos. If you remember our other bunnies were just wee little things. We’ll see Daisy’s true size once we clip her fur. One of our daughters doesn’t want to clip her because then she’ll be “naked” and cold but I think now is the time before winter is here that way she has time to grow it back. On average she will need to be clipped four times a year. Definitely makes for lots of new things to learn…..