Lop being stubborn about lopping?

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lauratunes12

lauratunes12

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Aug 29, 2012
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Location
Willmar, Minnesota, USA
She was lopped for a while, but lately Faith has been skittish and always has her ears all over the place. We do occasionally see them down, but she's usually got them straight up or airplaned, listening to everything. Something tells me she won't be any better at shows, because there is LOTS of noise there. Is there any way to fix this?

Also, speaking of skittish, she won't let us do anything to her, and taking her out of her cage is always a challenge because she backs into a corner so we can't get her. Will handling her more help this or are some buns just more skittish? We try to clip her nails, and the only way we can do it is wrapping her in a towel, and even then she disowns us for a while.

We plan on showing her, and she has a great type, just not the greatest show bun attitude.

Also, unrelated, but we just saw some clear discharge from her nose. Everything else seems fine, except that we were gone about 30 hours and she didn't eat anything. Stress maybe? She's pooping and she is drinking plenty of water. But, what's weird is that half of her pellets in her dish are pulverized to dust.

For reference, she is a 5 month old Holland Lop.
 
Hopefully an HL breeder will come on, but I understand that how well the ears lop depends onhead crown development.

The more you work with her the better she should become about taking her out and how she acts in front of a judge. Itsbest to work with them from the time their born though. Judges will usually have a little patience trying to pose a rabbit but if she doesn't cooperate then she won't show well.
 
I've also heard that hollands take a lot of patience sometimes. Some of them can just have attitudes. She is getting to that teen i dont want to do anything for you take on things. We always find that these girls do much better after they have had a litter. When people are getting into showing I always try to give them a buck first because they are less likely to act this way and are much more friendly at the teen age. What food are you using? I don't know how it could have been pulverized but maybe that could have something to do with the clear discharge.

Also yes the ear placement had to do with genetics and the crown. Do you have pictures of her? It could be a slipped crown and if it is she might not do so well on the tables. Some people have crazy ways of making the ears go down and it reminds me alot of the backstage at horse shows and the things people do. Such as weighing their ears down with quarters. . .I do not raise hollands but this is just something I have heard.
 
She is in my profile picture, or...

284331_4199129849646_773241241_n.jpg


So we have seen her ears lopped all the way, just not usually. She was about 2 1/2 months in this picture.


She has more or less always had an attitude, maybe she will calm down once she passes the junior stage, I have no idea.

Then here is a picture of her ears recently, airplaned.

530980_4468110173986_963649307_n.jpg


She has stopped biting us when we try to get her out of her cage, but she still runs into a corner(usually the cardboard box we have in her cage) and freaks out until we actually have her, then she is fine and happy.

If we end up just breeding her, or even keeping her as a pet, then that's fine, but we really would like to show her.
 
How recent is Faith's second picture above? Her head and crown appear to be fairly underdeveloped for her age, which causes the ear control. Holland Lops have an area of cartilage between the ears called a crown. The crown is what controls ear carriage. A correct crown is placed high on the head so that the ears fall directly behind the eye and is wide from front to back and side to side, which causes the ears to fall flat against the head rather than airplane. An incorrect crown may be slipped (farther back on the head) or narrow, giving the rabbit ear control. Exactly how much control the rabbit has depends on the severity of the fault.

In Hollands, vertical ear carriage is a disqualification. From what I have seen, usually anything above horizontal is considered vertical, but it depends on the judge.

Ear carriage is a genetic trait and the ears can't be "trained" or made to lop. It's something that can be fixed by selectively breeding rabbits with a bad crown to rabbits with better crowns.

Faith's crown will certainly develop more. Usually the head continues to develop through 2 years of age. However, a rabbit with poor ear carriage at 5-6 months usually will not exhibit perfect carriage later in life either. So the type you see at this age is a good indicator of what's to come...they just "bulk up" a little as time goes on.

As far as her temperament, like Sarah said, she is at the "don't touch me" age, which is typical for some Hollands. Handling her regularly will give her the best chance of coming around as a senior, but temperament is not only from environmental influence. That is another genetic trait too, from my experience. So whether her attitude turns around at all is something you'll discover in time.
 
hollands have a "don't touch me" age? you mean my Gazzles might out-grow her tendency to walk up to me but then dart off as soon as I go to pet her? man, she does NOT want to be touched some days. she was a total cuddler as a baby and still has days where she enjoys being pet (and she'll always sit in my neighbor's lap for like an hour)... but a lot of times she's got this total "GTFO, mom" attitude.
 
The last picture was from about two weeks ago, I'm just confused, because, as evidence in the first picture, her ears WERE lopped. She does seem to have a lot of control of her ears, puts them wherever she darn well pleases. In that picture she was "watching TV".

Ah well, she may just be a pet.

We would still like to get into showing, but my dad has proclaimed that Faith is too much trouble(she still bites him if he ever feeds her) and so we aren't getting more bunnies. D: Hopefully we'll be able to sway him.
 
Get a buck and see if that does the trick :p

I am also curious as to how her ears suddenly started becoming vertical as she looks like she had a decent crown when she was younger. Julie has some pretty nice hollands and, from here, might be able to answer that question best as only someone with a large experience of different hollands would.
 
lauratunes12 wrote:
The last picture was from about two weeks ago, I'm just confused, because, as evidence in the first picture, her ears WERE lopped.
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If you have ever heard a Holland Lop breeder say, "DON'T sell the babies young!" this is why.

Holland Lops are very slow to develop. At weaning age (8-10 weeks of age), the only thing you can safely evaluate for are obvious disqualifications and sometimes brood characteristics, if you know the line well. After that, it is closer to 4-6 months of age, depending on the line, before the kit's type is really any indication of how they will mature.

I have had Hollands who had nearly vertical ears until 12 weeks of age and then suddenly lop entirely overnight. I've had Hollands with great ear carriage when they were young and then they developed ear control between about 3-5 months of age as their head and crown developed. Development is varied and there is really no reason for it...different lines develop differently. It's the same if you were to walk into a first grade classroom. You would have short children, tall children, big children, small children. And many of those children would look a lot different by high school. Some of the short ones may have grown tall, some of the tall ones may have matured to be an average height. It's the same with rabbits, but the development of Holland Lops in particular is rather inconsistent for most of us. :) They get more consistent for those who have been working on breeding their own line for many generations.

Usually by 6 months old, you've got a pretty good idea of how the rabbit will turn out. At that point, any major faults will likely not improve.

Jennifer- Usually around the later junior age (like 5ish months), Hollands get rather feisty. It's mostly because their hormones start kicking in and they have to figure that out. I like to use the term "teenagers" for those bunnies. :p It's not a permanent phase though. Some rabbits will naturally have a more skittish temperament overall, but any with sudden changes in behavior like the don't-touch-me-phase are just temporary.
 
I'll keep holding out hope she'll get cuddly again, hehe (and not JUST with my next door neighbor >.>). she's just over 6 mos now/got spayed over a month ago and seems to be starting to warm back up to me.
 
Well, we might just have to look into getting a buck then. :p

That's really interesting, I never knew that their crowns could change between their baby stage and their junior stage. We did get her at 7 weeks. Thanks for the info!

She really does act like a teenager though, we try to pick her up and cuddle, but she runs off and stretches out in the corner like "mom, I need my space!"

Thanks guys, no showing for her then I suppose. She's lucky she's cute, because she's a lot of work. :vacuum:
 
You can still try to show her. I always just love to get comments on my rabbits even if I know they might not do so well. This would be especially true for my juniors. I know they might not compete but I love to get judges opinions.
 
woahlookitsme wrote:
You can still try to show her. I always just love to get comments on my rabbits even if I know they might not do so well. This would be especially true for my juniors. I know they might not compete but I love to get judges opinions.
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This is a good idea. :) Especially if you plan on breeding her, getting the opinion of a few judges or fellow exhibitors will be good. That way, you'll have an idea of whether she is breeding quality and also how to choose a buck to compliment her.
 
Also after the Hollands show you can go up to the judge and ask for better comments if they didn't give you very good ones. Don't be afraid usually all judges are willing to help :)
 
Everyone basically already answered the crown questions the way I would've. I wanted to add that 6 months is usually breeding age for rabbits. Some does cramp when they begin estrus and will be grouchy until bred or spayed. I've seen this on two different rabbits of mine so far, and I had just started breeding in May (breeding just wasn't for me so I stopped). Also wanted to add my concern about the discharge. Is she still doing it? I'm not too overly worried because I've known my Hollands to have discharge when I get to the bottom of the pellet bag where there's more dust. You can try a sifter feeder and see if that helps. The pellets being pulverized, to me, is an indication that they got wet. When they dry, they look like powder (and can be really harmful to the bun because wet pellets can grow fungus).

If you get a buck, I would get an older buck (at least 6 months, pref older) that you know has an excellent crown. You will want to compensate for any other flaws she has as well. Taking her to a judge will help you know what to look for. HEC (head, ear, crown) is a biggie. Width and thickness of bone is also important. This website has been really helpful to me.
http://oakridgerabbitry.weebly.com/holland-lop-type.html
 
Yeah, figured that one out. We haven't seen discharge since, and we are at the bottom of the bag, so it probably was that. I wasn't the one to give her pellets before, so I didn't know that they were probably dust already.

That's actually the exact website we went to when we were first looking into getting a holland! The trick will be to find a purebred, older Holland buck. They're surprisingly enough not very common around here. 3/4 of the rabbits at shows are Rex's.
 
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