There are usually at least six - if not more - bucks living here at Hillside Farm Hawaii. Since they have much more influence on the quality of a herd than any individual doe, we try to keep the best bucks possible. However, due to the requirement that they be kept in their own spaces, we only have room for a half dozen of them at most. At the moment, which is July 1st, 2023 there are six bucks here. Depending on what shows up in this year's litters, there will probably be a new buck at some point this year. It all depends on who shows up.
The Hillside Farm Boys are sorted by alphabetical order. You should be able to click on their picture and bring up a personal page for each bun for more information about each one.
Our herd bucks are first selected for the quality of their wool, since after all, these bunnies are all about fiber so the better the fiber the better the bunny. The coat texture should be insanely soft with a silky texture and if we can get some crimp (wavy-ness) in it, even better. If we could get enough crimp, we might even be able to get pure angora yarn which would have a bit of stretch or 'sproing' to it. At the moment, for Hula Bunny yarn, we add in some very fine Merino sheep's wool and silk to our English angora fiber so it will have a bit of stretch and bounce from the Merino and a bit of shine and strength from the silk.
We also select according to the American Rabbit Breeders Association's "Standards Of Perfection" for proper English angora conformation. A correctly built bunny is usually a healthy bunny, although we still choose wool texture over the angle of their ears. English angoras are a 'compact' bunny, which means they're rounded half sphere shape and not a long loaf shaped bun. Kinda like half of a large basketball in size, although when they're in full fluffy mode they seem much bigger than that. It's all fluff, though, the actual bunny is pretty small. English angoras are the smallest angora breed and among the smallest of the 'wool' breeds of rabbit.
The next selection criteria for the bucks who live here at Hillside Farm Hawaii is temperament. These bunnies get handled a lot, and a grumpy bunny is no fun. Even worse would be a bitey bunny or a downright mean one, those won't be kept if any ever show up, nor would they be sold. Rabbit recipes will fix that level of nastiness if it ever appears here. We've not had any mean ones and very few have been even the least bit 'nippy' although sometimes they will taste things. It is also a sign of friendship to groom each other so if the bunny grooms us back that's not biting, that's showing friendship bunny style. Sometimes a diva bunny will pick up the scissors or something else on the grooming table and toss it onto the floor. Then they usually sit back with an attitude of "There! I showed them!", that's not mean though, that's just 'Diva'. So temperament is an important thing to consider when breeding. We're starting to see some pretty friendly bunnies these days, especially some of the bucks. Overall, bucks are generally more outgoing than the does.
The third thing the bucks are selected for is the ease of coat maintenance. Some coats mat more than others. Since we have a whole herd of them, easy care coats are more important than when an angora is a singleton pet or 'wooler' bunny living with someone who spins who will make the bunny's fluff into yarn. A little bit more grooming isn't so bad when it's only one but multiply "a bit more grooming" by twenty or more and then it makes a huge difference.
I think we are now also going to be selecting according to size of litters and mothering abilities in the doe as well. Since we've started doing that, litter sizes have increased. There are a lot of folks who raise bunnies who are concerned about litter sizes and weight gain, so we're using their methods, although we don't really track the weight gain part. This is still a fairly new selection criteria so it's still a bit early to tell how well it's working.
We've been breeding for dense coats and those are showing up as 'extra fluffy' coats. Sometimes the coat is so dense that clippers won't get in there for harvesting the wool so very pointy barber's scissors get used instead. The extra dense coats are more likely to have mats than the less dense coats, that's the next thing to work on.
The wool quality is soft and silky, most of the 'cottony' feel has been bred out. The color density is starting to increase, too. Which, since the yarn these bunnies provide fiber for, Hula Bunny yarn, doesn't have any dye to color it, is important. The more color in the bunnies, the more color in the yarn.
We also breed the bunnies according to how inbred they would be with a certain pairing. We try to keep the Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI) to less than 25%. We are also concerned about if the offspring from a particular pairing will be able to be bred to any of the others. Importing rabbits to Hawaii is a pretty lengthy process and involves us having to fly to Oahu to pick them up from the Agricultural Inspection station there at the Honolulu Airport. It's much easier to just arrange the genetics so we don't need to import.
With all these various selection criteria, it can take quite awhile to figure out which bunny should meet which bunny. Having a database is essential to tracking all this data. Sometimes a database and a spreadsheet are necessary to figure it out.
Each buck has his own space, although they can still visit with their neighbors through the wire separating them. Sometimes, when bucks aren't neutered, they can get territorial and grumpy with other bucks. It is even possible for them to get grumpy up to the point of killing each other. They don't seem to ever get grumpy much with females, just with other males. And usually only with other males if there's females around. It can be possible to keep males together, but just to make it easier than to figure out who is gonna get along with whom, we just keep all the adult males in their own separate areas.
We have a two big hutches with an upper and lower level. One of those hutches has each level segmented into three bunny spaces. That has now become the 'Buck Hutch' so we can easily keep six bucks at any particular time. There are a couple of spare side hutches, should we end up with more than six for awhile, but we try to keep just six bucks out of a herd of twenty to twenty eight bunnies. That's the plan, we will see if the bunnies get the memo.