How To Shear A Rabbit
Patti the Garden Girl shears one of her angora rabbits, in preparation for making a baby hat.
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Step 1:
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Sheering rabbits
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Today I am going to show you how I go from rabbit to baby hat. And I’m going to start off by shearing one of my giant Angora German rabbits. Now this guy right here, he is a buck here and he was born here. He’s about ten months old and I have sheared him before but he is a little bit nervous right now, and a little bit skittish. So I’m going to spend a little time petting him and I’m also going to start brushing him a little bit too.
I’m just going to take some time here right now to get rid of all the mattes that I can. And this is basically just clipping all of the matted hair that really isn’t going to be useable at all and I’m just going to start there.
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Step 2:
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Make a baby hat:
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Now I love knitting and I love spinning and I love doing it when I have a specific person in mind. Today I am going to take all of the angora from my buck here and I’m going to spin it into some yarn that I’m going to make into a small baby hat and its going to be for Palo, who is my neighbor. My new neighbor, he’s six months old yesterday and since winter is coming near I’m going to make him a hat that’s going to keep him super extra warm this winter.
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Step 3:
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Angora wool is warm!
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OK, so I’m just brushing my buck angora out right now and I’m going to pick a place to start shearing him. Now the angora wool is actually seven times warmer than sheep’s wool. So it’s a super, super ultra warm fiber. Actually a lot of mountain climbers use it, that are going to climb in extreme conditions. They have thermal underwear that’s made out of angora. So its really super warm. It does really well when you blend it with different types of fibers. So a little bit of angora actually does go a long way.
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Step 4:
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You need sharp scissors.
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These scissors that I’m using here, these are Fiskers scissors. They’re the best kind of scissors to use actually for this project, they’re fabric shears. These are the kind that you want to use. And you also want to make sure that when you get these scissors that you get a sharpener with it, you’ve got the Fiskers sharpener. So you want to make sure that your scissors are as sharp as they can be. You definitely, when you get the scissors, you gotta get that too.
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Step 5:
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Check it out.
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This is absolutely useable, and check this out, check out how awesome this is. I can just take it from here and I can just start spinning it. And then I’m doing that real short. This is just working perfectly.
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Step 6:
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Next time: hat making.
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There we go, I am pretty much done with this rabbit and I just have a little bit more that I’m going to do. I’m just going to clean him up a little bit and cut his toenails and just make him look a little bit prettier. But after I do that I am going to show you how to take the angora wool, cart it and spin it into useable yarn. And then I’m going to make a little baby hat for my neighbor Palo.
