Spare hair

[Gina.Jenny]

Its springtime in the northern hemisphere, and soon lots of birds will be building their nests.

They will welcome any unwanted bunny hair to make a cosy lining. I collect any obvious bits lying around on the floor, plus the hair collected by the grooming brush, and drop it outside in the back garden when the buns go out for grass time. There was quite a bit yesterday and its all gone, so I think there is a happy pair of birds with a nice cosy nest ready for their eggs somewhere nearby. I’m sure it will do a great job of keeping the eggs warm, plus newly hatched birds will find it just as soft and snug as a litter of new bunny kits would!

[Bam]

I do that with my dog’s hair if she sheds in the spring! I once saw a pair of Great Tits (parus major) collect the fur I’d hung up in an apple tree, minutes after I’d hung it there.

The buns’ hair I save for myself though. I hope some day I’ll have enough to send it away to be spun. I’ve 59 grams now, that’s 2 ounces. It’s still almost a full 3-liter bag though, it weighs so little.

[LittlePuffyTail]

I’ve been saving the bunny fur but not going to put it in my yard, going to bring it next time I go for a walk on a nature trail. I want birds OUT of my yard. My neighbor is a crazy bird lady and feeds birds and pigeons and they poop all over my yard and car.

I wonder if birds like horse hair. I have a 800 lb horse in the middle of a huge shed…

[Bam]

I don’t know if horse-hair is soft enough for birds to line their nests with, but it ought to make the most awesome building-material. You could hang a little bit up in a tree and see if it’s gone by the next day =) I hear you on the crazy bird-lady, we have one of those too, and while the birds that come to eat don’t do any harm, putting food out on the ground attracts rats. I even saw a rat in the backyard a couple of weeks ago!

Squirrels like dog’s hair too, they don’t collect hair only in the spring but also in the summer. They have multiple litters and the mommy-squirrel has to use the fur on her her own tail to line the nest if she can’t find sth else. So if you see a squirrel with a measly-plucked out tail in the summer it’s probably not a sick squirrel but a mommy-squirrel.

[Diamond]

I brushed Lily a few days ago and there’s still tufts of fulff floating around the bathroom. That’s a good idea to do with it.

[MeketatenBun]

I do that with Meki’s fur as well as my husky’s fur– the birds in my neighborhood must have the nicest nests!

When I had Nefertari in my early teen years, apparently at one point I had an old iPod box (it has a clear plastic lid) that I taped a tuft of shed hair inside. When cleaning my old bedroom in my parent’s house last year, four years after Nefi passed away, I found that box. I’m glad whatever thought was going through my 13 year old self kept that tuft, because now I have a piece of Nefertari to keep with me

[Author]

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