The two angora bunnies from my friend Angelika grew up to be real friendly, but also became two boys... and they grew loads of hair... I had a hard time remembering they needed to be combed, again, and again, and again and felt pretty bad about that, especially when one got a little matted so I combed him out well but almost left him naked! I was a little too focused on removing the matts I forgot to check how much was coming off, and that in early spring... Angelika had room again so she took her two boys back. I do still have a couple containers of angora hair but found it did not even work real well for felting... so much for that idea.
I did learn I like to have bunnies, especially for the amount of weeds that go in and the piles of poopies that come back out, but are no good with high maintenance breeds. A friend of mine came across an older meat breed doe, a Giant Chin (chinchilla, as in similar color) and I ended up buying her. After a lot of looking and asking around and visiting the Buffalo County Fair and the Syracuse State Fair, I was unable to find her a buck, any meat type buck, anywhere! I happened to mentioned this unfruitful search to a tin can rally friend of ours, who laughed and said he had just started breeding his own meat bunnies a few years back and to come on over anytime. He lives like two blocks down our street...
So that's how our Giant Chin Anabel had a very enthusiastic date with this black New Zealand buck, 30 days later resulting in these two precious little bundles of fur...
Anabel is not with us anymore, she developed some sort of cancer and died late fall, but her daughter Clarabel and son Albert are still with us. For a short while they lived side by side in the bunny bungalow until I realized - Clarabel was hopping around with a hay mustache - that that wire middle partition might not be as much of a procreation hurdle for bunnies as I assumed... so now Clarabel lives with her six kids in the sunroom and Albert is by himself, at least until the boys are old enough to be sexed...
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