Deceased 3-week-old HL found with malocclusion

Question
Hello,

I'm in a bit of a dilemma,  I went on holiday the 20th April leaving my rabbitry to my cleaner, and when I got back the 30th, she informed me that 2 babies from the same litter but from separate nests (the doe was lacking in milk so I had 2 adopted by 2 other mothers).
One had died the night before, and the other the same day (I arrived home late at night).

I don't know why, but I went over the deceased kits, and happened to look in their mouths. Both of them had malocclusion and irregular wearing of the incisors. I have post-mortem pictures if you'd like.

I don't know what to think because I wasn't their to see this happen. I've no idea whether it was ante or post mortem, and what to think of the rest of the litter whose teeth are perfect, and the parents.

The parents come from the same breeder who is very careful in selecting her breeding animals, but malocclusion being a recessive gene, I suppose it could unfortunately pop up a long way down the line.

What to think? It was to late to send the babies for an autopsy, and the question is should I stop all breeding with this pair? I would never knowingly breed a pair if I knew they had genetic malocclusion, but here I'm not sure of the evidence, so what to do?

Thank you for your time, I can send pictures if it might help.

Answer
Dear Emilia,

I am sorry about the loss of the babies.  If the teeth were severely maloccluded, then it is not unlikely that the babies were unable to suckle, and died as a result.

Dental malocclusion is polygenic (i.e., a result of the interaction of several genes), and also may be affected by environmental factors.  I would not be surprised to find malocclusion in any purebred Holland Lops at some point, as one can never predict the appearance of the enough recessive alleles of the suite of genes involved for this to happen occasionally.

This is why I never recommend that people breed purebred rabbits.  They are all relatively inbred, as compared to wild type, and such recessive conditions are far more likely to crop up.

I hope this helps.

Dana