Holland Lop - History

History

This breed marked its beginning when Dutch rabbit breeder Adrian de Cock sought to combine the best qualities from two distinctively different rabbit breeds, the Mini Lop and the Netherland Dwarf, into a new breed.

In the winter, de Cock bred a white Netherland Dwarf doe to a Mini Lop buck, but obtained an undesirable litter. Unsatisfied, he decided to switch the sexes in the breeds, breeding a Mini Lop doe and a Netherland Dwarf buck. The resulting litter of six, however, all possessed normal, erect ear carriage.

Subsequently, in 1952, de Cock took a doe from the litter of six to breed with an English Lop buck. Producing five young of mixed ear carriage between lopped, erect and half-lopped. As the lone fully lop-eared doe was deemed too aggressive in nature, it was not subjected to further breeding and a half-lopped doe was instead bred with a buck from the original litter of six. In turn, the does from the original litter were bred with the bucks from the second litter. The resulting lopped young were selected from the litter and interbred with an emphasis on mino lop characteristics (in order to compensate for the infusion of the English Lop during the breeding process).

De Cock soon had a group of Holland Lops weighing between 2.5 to 3 kilograms. By January 1964, he bred the Holland Lops to a more desirable weight of less than 2 kilograms and presented four such specimens to the Netherlands Governing Rabbit Council, where the Holland Lop was recognized as a new breed. Soon thereafter, Aleck Brooks, founder of the Holland Lop Rabbit Specialty Club brought the breed to the United States in 1976 where they were subsequently recognized by the American Rabbit Breeders' Association in 1979.