Bunnies Are Here!!!

The bunnies are here, the bunnies are here!!! Who cares about anything else that happened this week, the bunnies are here!

Meet our tort doe (names not decided yet, coming soon!):

Our broken tort doe:

And our black buck:

The three cages, all put together and full o' rabbits! My mom is standing next to the cages for a size comparison.

We've already discovered that our black buck is a lover, so I caught some adorable candids of him and Mom:

Yay rabbits!!! We also picked up some rabbit food, salt spools, and put together some water bottles. But who even cares because we finally got RABBITS!! Can you tell we're excited?! The best part is the rabbits would even work as a breeding trio if we decide to breed them someday.

So, to summarize, we're thrilled with the rabbits, we're thrilled with the cages, and everything is running smoothly thus far. Now we just need to start making some money!

Tip of the Week: Rabbits claws are sharp, so if you don't want to get scratched, be sure that your cat isn't waiting outside the cage when you lift the rabbit out. It scares the rabbit, and then they scratch you really bad. Not that I know from experience or anything....

Some Assembly Required

This week there was some cage assembly, some appointment making, some list making, and some reading!

The big news of this week: We have assembled two of the three cages!!! It is actually pretty easy to put them together when you have an assistant, but the J-clip pliers are hard on your hands. After two cages I have a bruise on my palm and a blister on my finger! We have one cage to go, but it will have to wait until a later date. Here are some pictures:

First they looked like this:

 
Now they look like this:

The mop in the picture is to give you some gauge. The top of the two cages is chest-high, and the third cage, once assembled, stacks on top of them, so they'll end up being pretty tall!

We are really pleased with how the cages are turning out! I think we really got our money's worth, and when it is time to expand our herd I'm sure we'll be going with the same company.

After setting up cages today my mother and I made a list of things that we need to purchase to finish getting ready for rabbits. We still need to pick up feed, some barn lime, and salt spools. We're hoping to pick this up at the local farm/auto store. We also need to get some 2-liter pop bottles, so we'll need to increase our soda consumption this week, which shouldn't be a problem for us! 

There was some discussion between us and a breeder this week. We're hoping to meet up and check out some rabbits at the beginning of next week, hopefully Monday. Cross your fingers it works out!

 We finished up some holiday shopping yesterday, and with the aid of a great coupon (50% off!) I picked up this:

It works like a charm, and it will be SO convenient when we need to wind yarn we have spun. Now I just need to construct a homemade swift and we'll be set.

We also spent some time reading this week. I learned about grooming Angoras, including using blowers versus combing. We need to purchase some combs! My mother spent some time reading Basic Angora Farming and learned about different housing options, feed, and basic rabbit care.

We're so close to having rabbits!!! We're still stir-crazy, but putting up some cages this weekend made us feel a little better. We are ready, let's get some rabbits!

Tip of the Week: If you're putting together something using J-clips, wear gloves! I'm sure that my "injuries" from assembling the cages could have been prevented with a good pair of work gloves.

Cage Photos!

Unfortunately there isn't much new in the "Adventures in Angora" world, so today we're having Show 'N Tell Time!!

The one new thing I have to report is that we will be meeting with a breeder over my Christmas vacation to see some rabbits. Woo hoo! The breeder raises English Angoras and they have three different animals that we may be interested in, so here's hoping! *crosses fingers*

On to Show 'N Tell: Pictures of our unassembled cages!

 The J-clip pliers that we got to assemble the cages, plus a little free advertising for the company.

 So  many J-clips!! These are used to hold the cages together.

 The cage sides, ceilings, and floors, still tied together. They're massive! (See the litter pan pic below.)

 The wheels for the bottom of the cages, along with a hand for size comparison.

 Me with the litter pans. Aren't they enormous!!!! These aren't cages, they're condos!

 Urine guards!! Oh how nice they will be.

 Piles of parts. The urine guards are in the back, legs are in the front, and I'm not even sure what the middle things are yet.

 These are the three big boxes that showed up at my house. They're in front of or on a twin bed, for size comparison.

 The feeders we bought. The bottoms are mesh so the "fines" (dust) from the feed can fall out.

Final pic: the kits that make water bottles out of 2-liter pop bottles. Nozzles, springs, and clips, Oh My!

Well, I know it's not as exciting to look at cage parts as it would be to look at bunnies, but they're coming soon, I promise!! We are still anxious to get this going, so let's hope that the breeder we're seeing later this month will have some promising critters for us!

Tip of the Week: This week's tip is more like trivia, I admit. I learned while reading one of my rabbit books that the kits (baby rabbits) only eat about once a day. Rabbits are notoriously bad mothers, and some more aggressive mothers will attack or eat their young. Breeders will actually remove the nest box from the cage and keep it elsewhere, bringing it back only to let the mother feed the bunnies. I also learned that rabbit mothers aren't particular about who they're feeding, so if you have an orphaned kit you can often foster it to another doe.

The Hunt for Rabbits

Not much has happened this week, unfortunately. I feel like we need to put out a want ad: DSAR- Desperately Seeking Angora Rabbits!

This week I got the parts of the cages that were backordered, which is a definitely "win" for us. This next weekend my mother is going to come help me put them together, which should be fun. I'll be sure to post pictures ASAP.

Also, I set the twist in the yarn that I spun over Thanksgiving:

It's rough around the edges, for sure, but it will make me a very warm scarf in the future.

Also, I tried to needlefelt a rabbit out of some angora fleece that I had laying around. There are no pictures because it failed miserably. I'm not sure if I was doing something wrong or if the angora just wasn't cooperating. I've been successful in needlefelting before, so perhaps angora just doesn't like to felt? I took the last bit of it and spun it to make just a little line of yarn, just so I could get the feel of it, and it worked out pretty well.

The big news of this week is that we want a rabbit already!! We've done the research, we've got the cages (although they're not put together yet) and we've even purchased hay for them, but we haven't had any success on the rabbit front yet. Either breeders don't have what we want, or we're having a hard time getting in contact with them. I guess it is an "off" time of year to be buying a rabbit, but we have a contact that we're hoping to reach that has English angoras that we are interested in seeing. Here's hoping that by the next time I write in here we have some more news on this front! *crosses fingers

Tip of the Week: Before trying a craft that you've done before with completely different materials, do some research on it!! I'm sure that if I had done a little research on needlefelting with angora before I attempted it I would have been successful. I'll have to look that up this week and see if I was doing something wrong.

Our First Rabbitry Tour

What a week! I'm sure everyone has been busy with Thanksgiving and family and shopping like crazy, but we added in some rabbit time on top of all of that!  

We have a Twitter account! Please check out @SFFiowa for quick updates on our business!  

I have been reading Guide to Better Rabbits and Cavies as much as possible this week, and am now half-way through the book. One of the most interesting things that I stumbled across in my reading so far is that rabbits should be fed at night, as they are nocturnal. My farming background makes me think of "doing chores" first thing in the morning, but it will actually be nice to wait until later in the day so I won't be so rushed before I head out to my real job.  

My mother has been spinning like crazy lately. She's getting frustrated because her yarn is very inconsistent, but every source we've found has said that practice is all that can improve the quality. On Sunday I sat down with her wheel and spun a spindle's worth of Lincoln longwool, and I couldn't believe how quickly it went!! Now I'm longing for a spinning wheel, instead of the drop spindle that I play with from time to time.  

My mother also has been working on the shawl pins. Unfortunately I don't have pictures (I should have thought of that over the weekend!) but the success is limited so far. The colors of the clay change when they are baking, so our whites turned out more of a peach color. However, the designs my mother made are beautiful, so we simply have to work out the color situation and those will be good to go.  

My friend is working on designing hats, mittens, and other accessories for us to make with our Angora yarn. As we continue with this progress I will keep you all posted!  

On to the rabbitry, which I'm sure is what you're really waiting for: Saturday was a beautiful day. We (my mother, my friend who is in on this business, my spouse, and I) hopped into our vehicles and met in a town about 2 hours away. We actually got lunch first at a cute little family-style restaurant, and then did a bit of shopping before our appointment at the rabbitry. Once we arrived, the owner, JH, showed us around their operation. There were several hutches outside that housed ENORMOUS Flemish Giants, some of which he let us pet. That was a lot of fun. Then he took us into their garage, which is heated and air-conditioned, and showed us their small herd of Giant, French, and Satin Angoras. We really loved getting to finally see some rabbits in person, and we had fun petting their coats. He had two Giant bucks for sale, but unfortunately we're not really interested in Giants, so we told him we would have to think about it. After more discussion later, we're pretty sure we want to stick to French, Satin, and English.  

While we were there, he offered to take us up to their spinning room. On the upper floor of their beautiful historic home, they have a room full of spinning wheels and drop spindles (including a great wheel!) and bags upon bags of angora fleece. We had a good hour of "show and tell" time with the fleece, and at one point his wife, KH, joined us and began talking about her dying experiences with skeins of yarn she had spun. We ended up purchasing several ounces of Angora to take home and start spinning. We thought that even if we weren't walking away with rabbits, we could at least take the opportunity to have some starter fleece for the projects we have in mind.  

When we returned home Saturday night I emailed another local breeder immediately to try to contact them about some of their rabbits that we're interested in. They live near my parents, so I was hoping to get to see their livestock on Sunday, but the short notice prevented us from being able to get together. Hopefully we can remedy that situation soon.  

The next step for us is to get those cages put together!! They're still sitting in their boxes in my living room, but they don't do us much good like that, so hopefully this weekend I can spend some quality time with them. I'll post pictures if I have any level of success. Also, I need to be spinning as much as possible! We need to get our yarn out on the market!  

Tip of the Week: Collect phone numbers as well as email addresses from the breeders you contact. Many breeders that I have been in touch with do not list their phone numbers on their website, making them more difficult to contact if they don't check their email often. However, once you've had initial contact, feel free to request their phone number, and offer yours to them as well.

Contacts and Cages

What a week! The real world caught up with me a lot this week, but there were still some exciting developments in our soon-to-be Angora Land!

I finished reading Crafty Superstar this week so that I could pass it off to a friend that is in on this adventure with us. The last chapter was all about finding balance in life. There was a lot of information about how to keep your business part-time (if that's what you want) or about how to break into full-time. There was a story that really made me think about my goals. One of the collaborators on the book (who owns a very successful online consignment business) shared how she purchased a building to house her business, and how the plan failed miserably. It was actually good to read a story about someone who is now successful failing on their first attempt, because it reminds me that if at first I don't succeed, I can still make it work. Life isn't black and white, why would a business be any different?

I started reading Official Guide to Raising Better Rabbits and Cavies this week. So far I've learned about body types and some other general information, but I know from flipping through the book that there are articles about grooming angora rabbits, which is why I snatched it up at the local library.

The big news this week is that we got our cages!! Well, mostly. There were a couple items that were backordered that will be shipped to us ASAP, but for the most part, we have three cages, three feeders, and three water bottle kits. It was really fast!! I ordered them on Monday and they arrived on Thursday. What great service! I don't want to give a shout-out to the company without their permission, but if anyone is interested, feel free to email me at seedorff.family.farms@gmail.com and I'll hook you up with their information.

This week we make the trip to a local rabbit breeder! I'm so excited. They have Giant, French, and Satin angoras according to their website, and we're going there with the definite possibility of coming home with some. Eek! I'd better get those cages put together! If we don't find anything we're really excited about there we will be contacting another breeder that has English angoras, plus the breeder that I've been emailing for WEEKS finally got back to me yesterday, so there's another connection! Look at all of the success we're having all of a sudden!

By the time I write next week's entry I might have rabbit pictures! Cross your fingers everything works out!

Tip of the Week: When you're trying to contact someone and not having much success, just keep trying. I was anxious to contact one particular breeder because they had a great website with fantastic pictures of rabbits that I was definitely interested in, and after weeks of attempting to contact them I finally succeeded. I know that I will glean a lot of information from them. However, I will keep in mind how hard it was to reach them when it comes to spending money. Customer service counts!

The First Drop in the Bucket

Well, we've officially spent money!!

This week we purchased the triple stack cage kit I wrote about last week. We also discovered that their feeders and water bottle kits were cheaper than what I had priced at a local store, so we went ahead and ordered them too! We also got a bale of hay from a local farmer, so we're nearly ready to go! Sometime this week we hope to purchase rabbit food and minerals so we will be completely ready. We will have to have a Cage Assembly Party in a week or so.

Also, we finally got a book we ordered a few weeks ago. Basic Angora Wool Farming by Carl Nagel, has arrived, and we will begin devouring it immediately!

This past weekend I spent several hours online searching for any angora breeders in our state or the surrounding states. It was actually harder than I thought it would be, as many breeders do not have websites for their operations, and many farms have websites, but do not belong to any professional organizations that would make it easy for me to find them. I compiled all of the names, email addresses, and websites into an Excel document for future use. I'm planning on emailing all of them in the near future to see what connections I can make.

The poly-clay experiment is on! This past week my mother played around with creating shawl pins out of the clay and trying out different colors and styles. We've discovered that certain colors do not turn out the way we anticipated, but we are encouraged by the fact that they are light-weight and hardy, so once we have some specific designs churning out, we should be successful. We are very lucky that each of us has unique talents to bring to the table in this fiber farming adventure!

This week I read a couple more chapters of Crafty Superstar. I learned more about customer service and production of your products, plus how to get involved in craft shows, both locally and nationwide. The book encourages crafters to start a show in their own area if there is not one readily available. Not something we're interested in immediately, but an interesting thought for the future.

The weekend of Thanksgiving we're going to our first breeder. They have Giant, French, and Satin angoras, and we're very hopeful that they have something that will spark our interest. We have also contacted another breeder that lives near my parents that has English angoras, so if we come up short at the first place, we'll definitely be contacting the second breeder. I'm also excited to see what I can drum up with the new breeder list I compiled. My only disappointment: We still have not heard from a breeder in a neighboring state that we are VERY interested in. I've emailed them several times from different email addresses, but I haven't had any luck, despite the fact that they have a fantastic website that they update often. At this point I guess we have to give up on them.

Tip of the Week: Join professional organizations. Not only do they have valuable information that they can share with you, but they also often have directories that you can add your name to for free or a small fee. The advertising is great, and prospective customers may take you more seriously if you show that you value the professional organizations available to your business. We may be joining the National Angora Breeders Club in the near future!

Cages, Crafting, and Dyes, Oh My!

So much has happened in the last week!! I have information about the rabbits and preparations for them as well as crafting endeavors that we're interested in.

This weekend we found cages that we are very excited about. We've been looking into different venues to purchase cages, which is a change from our original plans. Originally we were going to build our own cages, but we decided a couple weeks ago that the best thing to do would be to purchase a cage and then copy its blueprint to make more when we needed them. However, we've been having a rough time with our cage shopping. We kept finding cages that were very expensive and didn't include any of the accessories we would need, such as urine guards and litter pans, plus the shipping was very expensive. However, we had a break-through yesterday.

When shopping online yesterday we came across a website that offers triple stacked cage kits. The kits include everything that we would need except feeders and waterers, plus have reasonable shipping costs, for roughly $300. This is still a lot of money, but it would be a complete set of everything we would need, plus we would be completely set up for our first livestock purchase. We are very excited about it, and although we have not ordered them yet, we are definitely planning on it.

We also went to a local home and farm store today and priced everything else we would need for the rabbits. We discovered that we can purchase gravity feeders for $9 each, water bottle kits (to make soda bottles into water bottles) for $2 each, mineral wheels and hooks for $.50 and $1 each, respectively, rabbit food for $11 for a 40 lb. bag, and show supplement (we're thinking of adding this to the feed to increase the quality of their coat) for $6 for a small bag. (All prices are approximate.) We would also need hay, but we can purchase a bale from one of my parents neighbors for much cheaper than the tiny bags of hay they sell for pet rabbits, so we're planning on going that route. We feel like we really know what kind of money we're talking about now, and we're ready to make it happen.

We also spent part of the weekend setting the twist in my mother's first homespun yarn!! It's pure Lincoln Longwool, from the sheep we raised when I was a child. It's a bit rough, but we are using it as a learning experience, and I'm looking forward to the beautiful yarns my mother will be creating in the future. She's been spinning every day, so I know that more gorgeous yarn is on it's way.

We also bought a magazine with information about natural dyes. We're interested in learning to dye our angora fiber using natural ingredients to create beautiful colors while using the world around us, and the information we came across is very helpful. There are many ideas that are sprouting about this, to be sure!!

There are so many crafting options we looked into this weekend. We are trying to come up with products that we can make with our yarns or to complement our products, and a trip to a local JoAnn Fabrics gave us tons of ideas. We purchased an i-cord knitting machine, which works like a dream, and we will be able to use to make coiled purses. It's much more efficient than hand-knitting yards and yards of i-cord! We also purchased some poly-clay. We hope to craft original, artistic shawl pins from the poly-clay that will be perfect complements to the shawls we hope to make out of our angora.

We've also set our brains onto the idea of designing our own line of 100% angora hats, gloves and scarves. They would be very warm, which would be great for the cold winter months ahead! All-in-all, we should have tons of goods to sell someday. Just with the ideas we have now, we could sell raw angora wool, angora yarn, knitted and crocheted accessories, and handmade shawl pins.

The next step is obvious. We need to purchase the cages and all the other materials that we will need so that we can go out and get our first rabbits!

Tip of the Week: Check out your local library. A quick trip today left me with tons of books about raising rabbits, including specific information on how to groom angoras and how to keep careful rabbit records. There were also many resources available for how to start your own business, including free materials on learning to budget and plan for expenditures. It was very enlightening.

Organizational Meeting Time

This weekend the businesspersons involved in Seedorff Family Farms got together to determine what exactly we are trying to do, and how we're going to go about doing it. My mother, my friend, and myself got together and discussed our goals for the business, how we're going to split up costs and profits, and where we need to go from here.

A festive Halloween/Birthday party got the three of us together this weekend for some fun. Outside of the festivities, we spent some time yesterday looking up cages online and stumbled across something that sounds very interesting. We found a book titled "Basic Angora Wool Farming" by C. Nagle. We went ahead and ordered it, so it should arrive sometime this week. We all need to be keeping up with our reading! We also looked at rabbit cages on eBay with the hopes of finding something inspiring, and stumbled across some cages that look like what we're hoping to get that are much cheaper than what we've been finding elsewhere. We're going to look into how much shipping costs, and if it doesn't sound too bad we'll go ahead and order a couple to use for our first rabbits. We'll also be able to use the cages as patterns to build our own cages. We are definitely moving forward on the cage front. We hope to have at least one cage by Thanksgiving.

Also, we decided to open a checking account this week. We're going to get all three of our names put on the account and keep careful track of how much starter money each of us puts into the account. Once we have an official account, we can move forward on other things we discussed this weekend, such as purchasing our own domain name for a website and having business cards printed.

As for the professional contacts that I was having problems with last week, we've had a response!! A fiber farm about an hour away from where I live finally emailed me back early last week, and we've set up a time to go check out their operation and possibly purchase some rabbits. We can't make it to their farm until Thanksgiving, which is why we're trying to get cages here and ready by then. As for the other contact that I talked about last week, we haven't heard anything, so I'm going to email them from a different account this week and see if I have better luck.

The reading is progressing. I'm still working my way through "Crafty Superstar" and my mother has finished "Rabbits: The Key to Understanding Your Rabbit" by Virginia Parker Guidry, so I need to catch up with my reading, especially as I have another book headed towards me now. The immediate next steps for me are to open a checking account on behalf of the business and get all of this reading done. Then we can move on to the cages!

Tip of the Week: Be sure that you have a detailed conversation with your business partners. Be sure that they are completely on the same page as you, including how much work will be involved, what they are hoping to get out of it, and how profits will be divided. Also agree to continue having open discussions so that as things change in your business, no one starts to feel that they are getting cheated.

Reading Up

I spent this week researching rabbits, rabbit farming, and crafting for a profit, as well as trying to make some professional connections.

I've stumbled across many websites this week by Googling "Angora Rabbits" that have a lot of helpful information about raising the rabbits and how to market their fleece. One website was particularly interesting because it talked about the "dark side" of rabbit breeding. They shared some tragic stories of finding that their bunnies had been attacked by predators in the night. This particular breeder had actually gotten out of angora farming because of the hardships they had endured. It's good (or at least wise) to hear the bad side, even though it's a little scary.

I've also been reading the book "Crafty Superstar" by Grace Dobush that has TONS of valuable information about starting a small, craft-based business. I'm really enjoying it! The section on starting up a business was particularly helpful so far. It includes a questionnaire to help the budding businessperson think critically about what they are trying to do and how they need to go about getting it accomplished. I've also read information about how to make your business "legit" and how to go about hiring a lawyer if you need legal guidance. The section on pricing made me think the most. More on that later in the tip of the week!

As for professional connections, I've been coming across some roadblocks. I've e-mailed two different breeders that are within a "reasonable" driving distance (less than three hours) of where I live, and I've come away empty-handed so far. One breeder, who is particularly close to where I live, has a great website with lots of information, but when I tried to contact them via e-mail, the message was bounced back to me. I've tried again, but I still haven't heard anything. I checked tonight to see if they had a phone number listed, but they only had their e-mail address. The other breeder I contacted hasn't gotten back to me yet, despite the fact that I e-mailed them much earlier this week. Lesson learned: if you want to sell something, be sure people can contact you!!

On a happier note, I contacted a friend that I've been hoping would get involved in the business with me, at least marginally, and she seemed to be interested. I'm hoping that having her involved in this endeavor will make it a little less labor-intensive and a little less scary. I'm planning on talking to her again this week, so I will hopefully have more information about that in next week's installment of information.

Tip of the Week: (Idea taken from "Crafty Superstar") Be sure you consider your own hourly wage when setting prices. Besides considering materials for your project, think about how many hours you spent crafting it, or in my case, how many hours were spent working with the rabbits. Do you really deserve to be paid $1 an hour for that beautiful shawl you knitted? Do you want to be paid less than minimum wage for the beautiful 4-ply yarn you spun? If you spent 18 hours crocheting an afghan and your labor is worth $10 an hour, than your afghan needs to cost at least $180 plus the cost of materials. If your work is quality, people will be willing to pay for it.

Fiber Farmers? Why Not!

Two weeks ago after a particularly difficult week at work for the both of us, my mother said, "You have to figure out something else for us, some way that we can make money doing what we love." Thus began the journey.

When I was growing up my family raised Lincoln sheep, a curly longwool breed with beautiful luster. We showed this sheep at many shows and attempted to market the fiber, but with limited success. I was too young to really get into the business side of the operation, and my parents weren't computer savvy. We made a few brief connections, but nothing that lasted, and we were essentially raising a large flock of pets. When my brother and I went off to college my parents sold the sheep, as we weren't making any money and my parents had lost their help. The journey into fiber farming was seemingly over.

Two summers ago I started crocheting, completely by chance. I was going to grad school and needed something to keep me busy after I was done with my homework at night. My mother handed me a "teach yourself crochet" book that she'd picked up somewhere, and I've been crocheting ever since. Shortly after this she began knitting, and we both began to immerse ourselves in the fiber arts.

After our conversation about finding something to do that we loved, I thought hard about how we could make money from our crafting obsessions, and I thought about the past experience we had. An idea popped into my head, let's try to fiber farm again!! I have the interest and the computer savvy to market our product, and my mother and I both love animals and wouldn't mind farming again. We debated what to get; our past experience was with sheep, but we could also raise cashmere or angora goats, alpacas, anything. Then I thought about angora rabbits. They're much smaller in size than the other livestock we were considering, and would have less of a start-up cost.

Fast forward to today. There was a rabbit show in my town today that an angora rabbit breeder I'd been emailing was showing at, so my mom and I went to check it out. We had a chance to discuss rabbits with the breeder, plus we checked out some rabbit equipment that was for sale and took some pictures. The breeder didn't have the information we were really hoping to get, but investigating the rabbit equipment paid off. There were some fantastic looking cages there, but we're hoping to make the cages ourselves. After examining the cages carefully we went to the local farm store and found some reels of cage wire for $20 as well as the clamps that hold the bars together and some "urine guards", or metal pieces that attach to the inside of the cage to keep the bunny from accidentally spraying outside the cage. I think we can make several cages out of the materials we found for much less than the purchase price of the options we found today. We didn't purchase cage materials, as we're still in the research phase of our budding business, but we did purchase a book on rabbits and a book about starting a small, craft-based business.

We're hoping to market raw fleece, spun yarn, and knit or crochet crafts made out of our angora fiber, with the idea that we may someday expand to include other fiber-growing livestock. This blog will be a way to record our journey from dabblers to owners of a (hopefully!) successful fiber farming and crafting business.

Valuable lesson of the week: If your first contact doesn't turn out to be what you were looking for, don't give up! Go find other contacts that may prove helpful. You have to slog through a lot of information before you find what you're looking for.