Breeding Holland Lop with Lionhead

[ckcs]

The desired outcome is a lionlop. I expect that will not happen first generation. Can someone help me with understanding how the genes will work when breeding the two together? I've been searching but haven't come up with a great deal of useful information.

 

[Dood]

Getting a good lop on the ears will be the most difficult part. Even breeding two lop ears can produce rabbits with upright ears.

The lion mane gene is dominant, one copy gives a single mane and two copies give a double mane.

You will get maned kits in your first litter but their ears will be upright. Keeping the ones with the floppiest ears and breeding them to a lop will improve the ears but they will likely be 'airplane' ears and a few more generations of lop crosses may be needed.

There are other factors that are not well understood that create short, sparse or poor manes and you may need to add more lionheads to get a nice mane in the final product.

 

[ckcs]

Getting a good lop on the ears will be the most difficult part. Even breeding two lop ears can produce rabbits with upright ears.

Does this hold true with other lops? For instance do English Lops ever get upright ears? That would be a sight to see

 

[Secuono]

Breed the first gen of lionxlop with a pure lop to get fully lopped ears. But then idk how the mane will work, it might be crappy. So then you'd breed that mix with a pure lion to get the mane?

 

[ladysown]

it will be a long term project.

The ones I've seen around here bred successfully use a mini lop rather than a holland lop. Keeping the smallest of the litters with floppy ears to breed again. it's a repeated game of breeding in lionheads once in a while to maintain the gene (using double manes only)

 

[Peach]

To perfect, this will be a project that will probably take quite and few years to make and refine. Since the lionhead breed itself is still under works, you should try to find a very exceptional one. Your lop should also be a very nice one. You'll have to cull harshly for results. I would probably breed to DM with a nice dense mane than a single mane. I normally see a bunch of single mane that just have a couple of strands left because they just loose them when they are seniors.

Do research into your breeds first too. I have a bloodline of Mini Lops that I introduced and they lop quick, heads are massive, and they grow like weeds. Westcoast bloodline lops are just better. I couldn't get anywhere near the same results in the same amount of time.