Blue Eyed Holland Lop

Question
QUESTION: Hi, my newest Holland Lop baby is all grey and has eyes that are an ice blue, almost blind looking is that normal?

ANSWER: Dear Jessica,

The blue eyes are due to a recessive mutation of the brown-eye gene.  This means that your bunny had to inherit one copy of this recessive gene from each parent (i.e., he is homozygous) to show the trait.

Blue eyes are not abnormal in the sense that they are a sign of an eye problem.  However, if you are breeding Holland Lops, note that they are already highly inbred, and the appearance of such recessive traits as blue eyes suggests that the parents may be too closely related to produce fully healthy babies.  The blue eyes may not be harmful, but when one recessive trait shows up in a line of highly inbred rabbits, it's not unlikely that deleterious recessive alleles will also be showing up in homozygous condition (and hence, being expressed by the bunny), such as those that control the vigor of the immune system, the aligment of the teeth, the normal anatomy of the ear canal, etc.

Please see:

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/breeding.html

Hope this helps.

Dana

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: they were normal when he first opened his eyes, now they are ice blue. according to the pedigrees my rabbits aren't related at all.

Answer
Dear Jessica,

All Holland Lops are related somewhere down the line, as they are a purebred variety.  So while they may not be *immediately* related, all members of the breed share a lot of recessive alleles that are not common to other breeds.  Hence, you have a higher chance of having recessive traits show up in purebred animals than in hybrids.

When baby rabbits' eyes open, they are quite dark in most cases, even if they are dark blue.  As the eye grows, the iris expands, and the amount of melanin (brown pigment) stays pretty much the same.  So the blue color of the eyes becomes more obvious as the babies get bigger.

Hope this helps.

Dana