How To Choose a Good French Angora Rabbit

When you decide to buy a French angora rabbit, there are several factors to keep in mind to help you choose the best rabbit for you.

First, when you go to buy your rabbit, you always want to make sure the rabbitry is clean.  You want to make sure the rabbits are well-groomed and that their cages are clean.  Also, you want to make sure that their shelter--barn, garage, or shed--is clean.  (Cleanliness helps prevent disease.)

If you are looking to buy a show-quality rabbit, these are some of the things you may want to do.  After you have gone to the rabbitry and seen that everything is clean, you will want to judge the rabbit for yourself.  (4-H is good for learning how to judge rabbits.)  Ask the breeder if the rabbit has been shown and whether it has won any legs.  You may also ask whether the parents have been shown and whether they have won any legs.  For a show quality rabbit, you need a rabbit with a good body.  Wool is supposed to be 55% of the points for French angoras, but French angoras have been bred so much for their wool, that some bodies just aren't good.  So judges tend to consider the body more than the wool.  But wool is important, too.  Good wool has good density, crimp, texture, uniform length, and an appropriate amount of guard hair.  Finally, you will want your rabbit to have at least a four-generation pedigree chart.

Now, if you want a wool quality rabbit, you don't need to consider the body type.  Indeed, a wool quality rabbit probably won't have a good show body-it will be long in the shoulders or have poor hindquarters.  It may have a disqualification (DQ), such as a splay leg, split penis, discolored nails, broken ears, etc.  Many wool-quality rabbits have excellent bodies, but have some other DQ like an unshowable color that you can't fool the judge with, like charlies or ermines.  (Not that you or we would even try fooling the judge.)

A pet quality rabbit would most likely have a bad body or poor wool.  But you always want to make sure that the bunny is a nice bunny and used to being handled. 

If you have any questions about choosing a bunny, please post a comment or send us an email!