COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: France
YEAR RECOGNIZED: 1939
USES: Wool, show
WEIGHT: 10.5 pounds (4.8 kg) max., senior bucks and does
BODY TYPE: Commercial
FUR TYPE: Wool, with great density
COLORS:
- Agouti Group — chinchilla, chocolate chinchilla, lilac chinchilla, squirrel
- Agouti Varieties — chestnut, chocolate agouti, copper, lynx, opal
- Broken Group — white in combination with any accepted Angora color
- Pointed White Group — white body with black, blue, chocolate, or lilac on nose, ears, feet, and tail
- Self Group — blue-eyed white, ruby-eyed white
- Self Group — black, blue, chocolate, lilac
- Shaded Group — pearl, sable, seal, smoke pearl
- Ticked Group — blue steel, chocolate steel, lilac steel, steel
- Tortoiseshell Varieties — blue tortoiseshell, chocolate tortoiseshell, lilac tortoiseshell, tortoiseshell
- Wide Band Group — cream, fawn, red
Another of the flffy angora tribe, French Angoras, which weigh up to 10.5 pounds (4.8 kg), are larger than English Angoras. Unlike the English breed, they have comparatively “clean-shaven” faces. Specimens with ear tufts have the tufts restricted to the ear tips. Seen from the side, the French breed has an oval appearance. Seen from above, the breed is oblong.
Like other Angora breeds, the French requires a great deal of coat care. It is an attention-getting exhibition animal, of course, but its primary purpose has always been the production of its long, silky hair, which can be plucked or shorn and subsequently spun into yarn for warm, lightweight garments.
British seamen brought Angora Rabbits to the Bordeaux region of France in the early 1700s, possibly from the Angora region of Turkey. By the 1840s, the long-furred rabbits were common in Savoy, particularly near the village of St. Innocent, which prompted an early moniker: Angoras of St. Innocent.
The breed spread rapidly in France and was exported to Japan (1920) and China (1932). The first export to the United States probably arrived in 1932.