History of the Holland Lop

Holland Lops were developed in Europe by Adriann DeCock. (They are known as Dwarf Lops in Europe.) Sometime before 1949-1950 he obtained a French Lop buck and bred it to a white Netherland Dwarf doe. He assumed that the litter would end up being smaller like the doe (or at the very least, smaller then the French Lop.) He unfortunately was wrong and in 1951 tried breeding a French Lop doe to a Netherland Dwarf buck (which wasn't easy!!) This resulted with rabbits with the short and erect ears, proving that this would be a dominate gene.
In 1952 he bred a doe from this litter back to an English Lop buck. One in this litter had lopped ear carriage, while others had erect ears and a few had ears that appeared to be half lopped. The lopped bunny was a doe, but very aggressive by nature and was never successfully bred.
DeCock tried breeding a doe with one lopped ear from the second litter, to a buck from the first litter. This resulted with even more lopped earred rabbits. By 1955 DeCock had the first Holland Lop which weighed between 4.5-6lbs. By 1964 he presented rabbits weighing 4lbs for acceptance.
In 1970 DeCock and twelve others formed a Holland Lop Specialty Club, which worked hard on breeding the weights even lower, which is the weight standard we have today.
By 1979 Aleck Brook had imported Holland Lops from Europe and pushed for acceptance by ARBA, which was approved.

(inspired by the 5th HLRSC handbook, original article written by Anthony Howard)