English Angoras are our primary fiber producers here at our rabbit farm, Tough Fluff Rabbitry. They are extremely unique and easy to identify as they are the only angora with fully furred faces and ears, called facial furnishings. When in full coat, they tend to look like a big poof ball with a nose! I’ll be the first to admit that we often refer to our buns as Tribbles! Their fiber is amazing for spinning as it has more crimp than either French or Satin Angora wool, and they also produce more due to their coats being more dense. The English can produce up to a pound of fiber per year. They have wonderful personalities, and are very easy to handle. This is very fortunate because of all the angora rabbits they require the most coat care to maintain their wool.
The Giant Angora is the largest of the Angoras. They can weigh as much as a whopping 10 pounds when fully grown. They produce anywhere between 1 and 2 full pounds of wool per shearing! They do not have any furnishings on their face as the English does, but they do have tufts one their ears! The Giant Angora does come in many different colors, but the only color that is showable is the Ruby Eyed White. The Giant Angora has no gene for plucking, and their coat doesn’t molt on it’s own, so they have to be shorn at regular intervals to maintain the health of the rabbit.
The Satin Angora has a coat very similar to a French Angora’s, but has a beautiful sheen to it. They are larger than the English Angora when full grown, and they have the easiest coat to maintain. Their wool tends to have less crimp than that of the English Angora, and being that the sheen also makes the fiber more slick it can be a tricky spin if not blended with other fibers. The Satin Angora features a higher ratio of guard hairs to wool hairs, and these are the shiny hairs. They produce less wool per cycle than do the English. The sheen has to do with the fact that the hairs are so much finer than the other Angoras, which allows light to reflect through it. They have no furnishings on face or ears. Their faces are super shiny and soft!
French Angora are very similar to the Satin, however they don’t have the same fineness of the individual fibers and thus the lack the sheen that makes the Satin unique. French Angoras are also sweet and docile. I personally haven’t had any experience with the French Angoras, but they are absolutely as lovely as the other breeds!
The rabbit fiber we produce is from Angora Rabbits. There are 4 breeds of angora recognized by the American Rabbit Breeder’s Association (ARBA). These are English, French, Giant and Satin. The fifth type of Angora is the German. We raise English and Satin here at Tough Fluff Rabbitry. All of our Angora fiber is from our own animals. Their fiber is removed with no harm or stress to the rabbit. Their coats have to be sheared in order to remove the wool, just like shearing a sheep or alpaca. There are few rabbits that shed their coat due to a recessive gene which makes them a “pluckable” rabbit. The process of plucking is just pulling loose wool that has already been shed from the rabbit’s coat. Our angoras produce a full coat roughly every 90 days. We shear them not only for their fiber, but for their own health. If the wool is not shorn the rabbits become matted and tangled. In addition, particularly in the summer months, they can easily become overheated. Temperatures over 80 degrees can even kill them!
In comparison to Sheep’s wool, Angora is incredibly soft and warmer! Even the fines Sheep’s wool doesn’t hold a candle to the wool of the Angora Rabbit! It has a hollow hair structure, so like Alpaca, it is lighter weight and warmer than Sheep’s wool as well. One of the other features of Angora in comparison to wool is the “halo” that extends out in a soft aura around the yarn.
Our current resident list consists of 6 English Angora and 1 Satin Angora. All of the listings in our shop include a picture of the Rabbit that it came from as well as what type of Angora it came from.