Lop Health Issues

People often prefer Holland Lop, Mini Lop, American Fuzzy Lop, English Lop, or French Lop bunnies.

Whenever a new lop eared bunny enters our program, applications flood in. Even when there aren’t lops in our program, we get tons of inquiries.

People are attracted to their ears and looks. We consider them the pugs or goldendoodles of bunnies. We get it, they’re adorable. They’re trendy.

But, they are NOT bred to be healthy.

They have brachycephaly which means their skulls and snouts are shorter than normal for rabbits. This is extremely cute, but can make it difficult for them to breathe and they often wind up with dental issues.

These dental issues can manifest in molar spurs, overgrown incisors, retrotubular abscesses, and more since their faces are too small for all 28 teeth to reside comfortably.

Not only this, but the lopped ear canals can narrow, causing a buildup of wax and deafness. In fact, about 60% of lops we’ve intaken into our program are at least partially deaf.

They often lack as many ligaments as other rabbits around their livers, leaving them prone to liver lobe torsion too. Over 80% of the liver lobe torsion cases we’ve personally seen have been in lop eared bunnies.

Lop eared bunnies are adorable and so sweet, but adopting one means you need to be prepared for health issues down the road.

We share this whenever we see a significant increase in surrender requests for lops with medical issues, as our team feels it’s important information.

Something kind of interesting is that we have quite a few veterinarians adopt from us. Usually their only requirement is “absolutely no lop eared bunnies.”