Hula Bunny Yarn is made with fiber from the bunnies here at Hillside Farm Hawaii. There's usually anywhere between two and three dozen of them, depending on how many of them have been born and how many of them have gone off to new homes.
Because the color of Hula Bunny yarn relies on the color of the bunnies and not any dye, we keep a certain balance of colors of bunnies. Although, we also have other concerns such as keeping a viable herd and who should be bred and who shouldn't.
They are all English angora, which is the smallest breed of angora bunnies. There's some other smaller bunnies who can provide some spinnable fiber, such as lionheads and such, but those are mostly breeds of bunnies for pets and not usually used as fiber provider bunnies.
Each breed of angora has a different quality of fiber. The commercial, Giant and German angoras provide a lot more fiber, but it feels a bit harsher and occasionally can be a bit 'prickly'. The French angora fiber has somewhat of the same qualities along with a lot of 'halo' or 'bloom' once it's made into yarn. The Satin angora possibly provides the least amount of fiber among the main breeds of angora rabbits, but it has a really lovely shine. The English angora fiber is the softest, when spun pure English angora, it's almost cloud soft. However, as one of the smaller angora breeds, the English don't provide all that much fiber.
The English angoras aren't usually a commercial fiber provider since they take more grooming because of their fluffy faces and ears. They also don't produce as much fiber as the Germans, Giants and Commercial angoras. Each bunny here at Hillside Farm produces about a pound of good spinnable fiber per bunny per year if things go right. Sometimes they molt and blow their coat all over the hutch before we harvest it. Sometimes they get a mat of fiber or they - especially the white ones - manage to get their fluff stained somehow. When a doe has a litter, she will harvest the wool for her nest so even though we get baby bunnies, we lose the wool harvest from her for that season. With about three haircuts a year, though, they start making more fluff very quicly.
They are just like little micro-sheep in that they usually get 'sheared' in order to harvest their fiber. Depending on what stage their coat is in, it can either be plucked when they are molting, sheared with scissors or sheared with clippers. They don't mind haircuts, if anything they get real bouncy and happy afterwards. Considering it's a five to six pound bunny who has just instantly lost a half to three quarters of a pound, that would be similar to a 150 pound person instantly losing 15 pounds in an hour. No wonder they get bouncy!
There are three main 'standard' colors of Hula Bunny yarn. In a perfect world we would have the same percentage of different bunny colors as the sales of the different colors of yarn. It doesn't seem to happen that way, though. The color we currently have the most fiber to create is the 'Moonlit Dance' color. It's a silvery gray, very much like moonbeams except really soft and warm when you touch it. The blacks, blues and some of the dark gray agouti bunnies help with Moonlit Dance yarn.
The next standard color of Hula Bunny yarn is 'Beach Bunny'. It's a lovely sandy tan color of yarn. The fawn and tortoiseshell colors of bunnies provide the fiber for Beach Bunny with occasional help from the lighter chestnut agouti and or chocolates, depending on the density of the agouti and chocolate colors.
The final 'standard' color of Hula Bunny yarn is 'Coconut Dream'. It's a creamy white color and is from the Ruby Eyed White (albino) bunnies here at Hillside Farm. The albino bunnies are the only ones who provide fiber for the Coconut Dream color and we usually run out of that color first.
Click on their pictures below and an additional page should pop up which will have more information about each bunny. I'll sort them by which color of yarn they help produce and then alphabetical color after that. These are also the bunnies as of December 26th, 2021. The members of the herd are always subject to change since many of them go to new homes to help other folks make their own bunny yarns.
Here's the bunnies sorted by Hula Bunny yarn color and clicking on their name will bring up their own Bunny Page (if they have one, not everybunny does yet). The bucks are in this by by yarn color list, too, so it's not just the girls. The bucks do have their own "buck" page as well at Hillside Farm Bucks. You can also click on the bunny's picture below to get to the same page:
* The 'REW' stands for Ruby Eyed White, which is an albino rabbit. All the bunnies here at Hillside Farm who provide fiber for the Coconut Dream color of Hula Bunny yarn are albino rabbits.
There's lots of fiber for the Moonlit Dance color of yarn and not really enough for the Beach Bunny and Coconut Dream colors. One of the first litters this year will be between two fawn bunnies, which will create a litter of all fawns so more bunnies for the Beach Bunny yarn. There should be some more albinos showing up as well, we hope.
There's currently twenty four rabbits in the herd at the moment, so we should have eight of each color, but, well, I guess the bunnies didn't get that memo. Some of the lighter agouti fiber can go into the Beach Bunny yarn, since the agouti is a warm brownish gray color. The only fiber for Coconut Dream, though, is the white fiber from the albino bunnies, so we're always running out of Coconut Dream color first.
