What Is a Fuzzy Holland Lop? Understanding the Wool Gene in Holland Lops

What Is a Fuzzy Holland Lop?

Before explaining what a fuzzy Holland Lop is, it helps to understand the different coat types found in rabbits.

When I was refreshing my memory on this topic, I consulted my daughter Evelyn and her trusty 4-H Rabbit Resource Handbook. According to the handbook, there are four basic fur types found in domestic rabbits:

• Normal

• Satin (which has a distinctive sheen)

• Rex (extremely short, upright fur with a velvety feel)

• Wool (very long fiber, as seen in Angora breeds)

Most rabbits, including Holland Lops, fall into the normal coat category.

The Three Types of Normal Fur

Within the normal coat group, there are three subtypes that describe how the fur behaves when it is brushed backwards on the rabbit’s body:

Standing coat
The fur stands upright and must be smoothed back into place.

Flyback coat
The fur snaps back into position very quickly after being brushed backwards.

Rollback coat
The fur slowly rolls back into place in a gentle wave.

When the Holland Lop breed was developed in the 1950s, breeders wanted the rollback coat to be the standard for the breed.

How the Fuzzy Gene Entered the Breed

Early Holland Lops were only available in solid colors, but breeders wanted to introduce the broken pattern (white with colored markings).

To achieve this, Holland Lops were crossed with English Spot rabbits, which carry the broken pattern gene.

The plan worked, but it created an unexpected complication. English Spots have a flyback coat, and this trait proved dominant in many of the offspring.

In order to restore the desired rollback coat while keeping the broken pattern, breeders introduced French Angoras into the breeding program.

The Angora contributed the rollback coat genetics that breeders wanted, but it also introduced the recessive wool gene.

In rabbit genetics:

• Normal coat gene is written as L (dominant)

• Wool gene is written as l (recessive)

Even though the normal coat gene is dominant, the recessive wool gene can still be carried silently through generations.

Occasionally, two rabbits that both carry the recessive gene will produce a baby with a wool coat.

That baby is what we call a fuzzy Holland Lop.

When Do You Know a Baby Is Fuzzy?

Fuzzy babies usually look identical to their littermates for the first few weeks.

Around four to five weeks of age, their coats begin to grow longer and fluffier. At that point it becomes clear that the baby carries the wool coat.

Fuzzy Holland Lops often have very sweet personalities and relaxed temperaments. For families who have time to keep up with regular grooming, they can be wonderful companions.

Why Fuzzies Still Appear

When two Holland Lops are paired for breeding, it is not always obvious whether they carry the recessive wool gene.

A pair of rabbits could produce many litters without ever producing a fuzzy. Then suddenly a wool-coated baby appears.

When that happens, we know both parents carry the recessive gene and we make a note of it in their genotype records.

For example, we went nearly two and a half years without producing a single fuzzy Holland Lop. After adding our buck Sullivan to the rabbitry and pairing him with our doe Penelope, we discovered that both carry the recessive wool gene when two fuzzy babies appeared in the litter.

Those babies were HCB’s Sand Dollar and HCB’s Driftwood.

While they are incredibly sweet rabbits, we generally try to avoid intentionally pairing two known wool-gene carriers because fuzzy babies can sometimes be more difficult to place in pet homes due to their grooming needs.

Fuzzy Holland Lop vs. American Fuzzy Lop

To make things slightly more confusing, there is also a separate breed recognized by the American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA) called the American Fuzzy Lop.

This breed was developed from fuzzy Holland Lops and French Angoras.

American Fuzzy Lops look extremely similar to fuzzy Holland Lops and share many of the same genetic traits.

However, in the show world they are considered two different breeds.

A fuzzy Holland Lop cannot be shown as a Holland Lop, because the breed standard requires a rollback coat. A wool coat would result in a disqualification.

An American Fuzzy Lop, on the other hand, is expected to have a wool coat and can compete successfully on the show table.

It is interesting how a trait that is considered a fault in one breed becomes a defining feature in another. This is one of the ways new rabbit breeds eventually develop.

Our Recent Fuzzy Babies

Pictured below are four of our recent fuzzy Holland Lops:

• HCB’s Howard (now Nestor)

• HCB’s Greta (now Aries) — about seven weeks old in the photos taken in early 2023

• HCB’s Sand Dollar

• HCB’s Driftwood

Sand Dollar and Driftwood were about five weeks old when their photos were taken, just as their fluffy coats were beginning to reveal themselves.