How do you evaluate the Holland Lop according to SOP (standard of perfection)? This article will hopefully help to answer your questions!
Holland Lops are judged on eight parts of their body. Each gets a certain number of points scheduled to it.
Head.................................. 24 Ears.....................................10 Crown.................................. 8
Body................................... 32 Bone, Feet, & Legs..................10 Fur....................................... 7 Color....................................4 Condition............................. 5
So lets look at an example of a Holland Lop being judged (you need to know how to properly pose your animal before you can evaluate them, we will not be covering posing in this article).
This is a good example: You want the rabbits head to be wide and round this rabbit needs more width between the eyes as you can see she has a narrowing head. BUT she has a nicely rounded head with a short mussel. We will look at more examples of this later but for now I will give her head: 10/24 points. Her ears are long but they are a nice shape and look thick so I will give her ears: 7/10 points. You want the crown to be wide from side to side, giving a horseshoe appearance so I will give this rabbit a 0/8 because its hard to see the horseshoe shape that should be there. The body holds the most points. I am not going to going into the nitty-gritty here but just simply state how many points I think this rabbit should get for body. there are a few things your looking for in HLs (Holland Lops) bodies:
Depth of body (no daylight comming trough)
Width of body (evenly wide across the whole body, not wide in front and narrow in back or vise versa)
The Midsection: a long midsection (the middle of the spine/back) causes the rabbit's pose to be forward, not exhibiting proper Holland Lop type. You also don't want too short of a midsection, or it ruins the topline and makes the rabbit slope off and have no depth over the hindquarters. If you allow the rabbit to move around naturally on the table a long midsection will become more apparent.
So I give this rabbit 10/32. Bone feet and leg... you need wide thick bone and strong ankles, you also dont want either the back or front legs to be pinched. I give this rabbit: 5/10. Fur needs to be in good condition, well groomed, shiny and not in a molt. I give this rabbit: 7/7. Color varies on the stander for the particular color your working with (I think thats pretty obvious...LOL) This rabbit is a black otter, she has good color and markings. I give her color a 4/4. Condition, they need to be in good weight (not fat and not skinny) and free of the following things:
Split penis
Only one descended testicle
Neither testicle descended in Senior
Under 2 lbs
Over 4 lbs
Malocclusion
Disease, infection, injury, or parasites
Blindness
Faking (dying, plucking, trimming etc. of the animal in order to deceive the judge)
Unworthy of an Award (not a DQ but does not look at all like a Holland Lop should look)
Some Other DQs are:
Entered in the wrong class
Illegible or incorrect tattoo
Vicious animal
I give this animal 5/5.
So tallying up all the points this rabbit gets: 48/100.
Now lets go into more detail in each area. I will give one good example and one bad. The rabbit that I make as a good example will not be perfect BUT will give an illustration of that specific point.
Head
The Holland Lops (HL) head needs to balanced in proportion to its body. Tow parts body one part head.
The Black Otter on the left, exhibits a nice head that isn't too big in proportion to its body.
The second rabbit pictured has a head that is too small for its large body.
The next thing you want to see in a HL head is width. You shouldn't be able to see their eyes when you look at them head on, if you can see one or both eyes the rabbit lacks width in the head.
The Jr. on the left has excellent width.
The Jr. buck on the right has poor width of head (you can see his eyes).
You want the head to be rounded properly, and not flatten off at the top.
The first rabbit shows proper curvature to brow.
The second is a example of a flattened head.
The next point seems kind of funny, but you want their cheeks to be wide and full. Not square and shrunk.
You can see the difference in theses rabbits, round vs. flat. The last rabbit displays a barely noticeable point at the end of her cheeks this is called square cheeks, which is not desirable.
The last thing is a short muzzle. (the distance between the rabbits eye and his nose).
As you can see the blue otter on the left has a nice short and flat muzzle. Whereas the Black Tort one the right has a long pointed muzzle.
That is the conclusion of the head section.
Ears
The first thing you are looking for in your HL ears are the width across the ear.
As you can see, the black otter's ear is wide across the middle where as the the brk. black otter's ears are long and skinny all around, which is not what your looking for you want the ear to be wide and flat like a spoon. You want it to be wide at the base as well. If it starts narrow it ends narrow, and vise-versa.
You also want the ears to be round and not pointed at the tips. It should have a tablespoon shape.
The blue tort kit has a nice rounded ear whereas the blue tort has a slight point at the end of her ear.
You also want the ear to be thick!
You can see here that the black tort has thick ears, the best way to tell is by feeling the ear. The brk. blue otter has very thin ears.
The next thing that your looking for is proper length (to the chin no longer).
The first rabbit exhibits proper length, the brk. black otter however has ears that are too long.
You also want the rabbits ears to be well furred, you should not be able to see though the fur.
The brk. blue otter (R) has good furring on his ears, while the black otter (L) shows some skin trough his fur.
Crown:
The first thing you need to remember while evaluating your HL crown is that if your rabbit is not relaxed the crown can look very different, so make sure you practice alot with your rabbit to ensure he is relaxed when you evaluate him.
You need to look at where the crown is set opposed to o where the ear starts, examples below (all slipped crowns with red, one none slipped with green):
The crown goes right along with ear shape, if the crown is wide the ear base is wide.
If it has poor width, it will close off the ear base and create a narrow folded ear.
You also want the crown to be wide from side to side, resulting in a horseshoe appearance .
The second rabbit is easy to see the horseshoe, but the first shows a crown that is very narrow at the base causing the ears to look far from its cheeks.
You also want the crown to be deep and heavily furred.
You want to see deep crowns that are well defined the first picture shows a rabbit with a not so well defined crown. The second picture shows a rabbit with a decently defined crown. And the blue tort doe at the bottom has the best defined crown in the group.
Body:
The first thing your looking for is a small body that is compact, you don't want a long and flat body that has height..
The black tort on the left has NO flat spot above her shoulder as you can see its nicely rounded. The blue tort in the middle has a flat spot. You want short compact rabbits with short midsections and correctly placed peeks. Here is a link to a chart that shows topline evaluation: http://hollyshollands.weebly.com/blog/archives/05-2016
A Full HQ (hindquarter):
The best way to tell if your rabbit is undercut or if he is full in the HQ (touching the table) is to slide your hand down its back to the table, your hand should hit the table and not be able to go under the rabbits bottom. The first rabbit is undercut. The last one are not undercut at all.
The next thing is that your rabbits back should slope.
You can see this best with pictures.
As you can see the Jr. choc. (chocolate) tort (left) has a good slope to its back. The blue otter has too much of a graduated curve (this may be because he is posed incorrectly but still its a good example just too see what exactly we are looking for.)
You also dont want your rabbit to have a pinched HQ ,their back legs will be angled in if this is so. If their back feet sit straight when they are flipped over this means that they are not pinched.
The black otters legs stick straight under him but the cream has legs that stick out to the side.
The last thing you want to look for is width across the rabbit from shoulder to shoulder.
The left orange rabbit is very narrow. The Sr. orange doe has better width. And the Pre Jr. chocolate tort (on the bottom) has ideal width.
Shoulders:
There are a few things too keep in mind when evaluating the shoulders of your rabbit. You need to be able to look at you rabbit CORECTLY posed and from a full side profile not on an angle or from above. There are three main things that you need to look for in HLs shoulders:
Length
Width
Depth
The first thing that you want to look for is depth, you want the shoulder to be deep and the limb to be short. On the black otter doe the shoulder is highlighted in orange. The limb is highlighted in green. He limb is good and short, but her shoulder is long.
The orange rabbit in the middle has a shoulder that is only slightly longer then his limb! This is not desirable at all!
The blue otter buck has a short shoulder and a equally long limb making him look he has almost flat ion appearance. This is to be preferred over the orange buck despite its ugly appearance. ALSO NOTE: the blue otter is a Jr. and he could grow into his shoulder.
The second thing is length, this is the length as in the space between the front limb and the back limb.
The black otter has space the orange has a wide space (incorrect). Lilac has no space (correct). Photo Credit: Ace's Family Rabbitry
Thirdly, you need to evaluate width when looking at the shoulder.
AGAIN: The blue otter is narrow and the black otter is wide.
Some other things that you should look for:
That the head is HIGH on its shoulders. The best way to tell if this is true is if the rabbits eye is in line with its topline.
Lets look at some examples:
As you can see the orange lines are actual the line that the eye follows. The yellow line on the cream doe shows where her eye should be. The black otters eye is correct. This tells you that the creams head naturally points down instead of sitting high on its shoulders.
BTW: The cream is not "posed" but her whole body is in a posing position just imagine if her front legs where down.
The last thing that your looking for is a dip in the shoulder. The 1st orange has a dip the 2nd orange has a curved line not dip at the shoulder.
Legs, Feet, and Bone:
This section is important for breeders because good bone is bred into a rabbit. Bad bone bred to bad bone will never produce good bone. But for the showman bone only gives your rabbit a extra 10 points out of 100. Although 10 isn't much I would still recommend reading the section so that you can better under stand what good bone legs and feet look like in a HL.
This first section of pictures deals with bone density. The first 2 picture show does that lack bone and thus their over all body lack some balance. The chestnut short and straight bone that has good density and body balance.
You also want the feet to be in line with the eye. You have to have you rabbit naturally posed and not try to shove his front feet up no make his limb look in line with his front eye when in all reality is naturally sits differently. As you can see the black otter has a good foot that ends there the eye ends naturally. The red rabbit has a limb that naturally extends further then his eye (he is posed correctly he just doesn't have good type).
Red's Photo Credit: Country Acres Rabbitry
The black otter has feet that kind of sit flat a tiny little bit o
n the table a judge would called this "slightly weak at the ankle" You can see if her foot continued to follow the orange line they would be perfect. But it curves at the bottom (the yellow line). The 2nd picture follows around the same lines. The orange rabbit is very weak at the ankle where his feet touch the table they sit flat. The chestnuts bone sits completely straight up and down with no bend at the ankle.
Fur and Condition:
The last thing but not the least thing that I want to talk about it the fur and condition section. A rabbits ability to condition is bred into the rabbit. If both parents are never in a state of show condition the babies will never be able to. Now what do we mean be condition and the ability to do so? Lets look at some pictures.
Looks at the orange rabbits coat. See how is isn't smooth all they way through and it has no shine. this could be because she doesn't have the ability to condition or if could be from a diet that lack what she needs to condition. The chestnut has they ability to condition see how her coat looks like one big piece? This is not because both her parent where show rabbits (they where brood) But because her parent had the ability to condition and she was on the proper feed 18% crude protein, oats and black oil sunflowers seeds. The 3rd picture is of a rabbit that will never be able to be conditioned. The 4th is of a show rabbit that has a extremely good ability to condition.
Rabbits need good nutrition to be able to condition. You cant expect them to do it when they are on bad feed and in poor living conditions. I personally believe in giving all my rabbit a chance to condition before a cull or pet-out. This technic has never proven me wrong, I am usually not disappointed with the results I get. This is a picture of the same orange doe that I talked about above 2 months later after going through my conditioning program. As you can see she lost weight (she needed to) and grew a beautiful one piece coat.
Color:
There are many people who breed rabbits that are not recognized by ARBA because of their color. So, lets look at all the colors which are showable
Chestnut Agouti: A_ B_ C_ D_ E_
Chocolate Agouti: A_ bb C_ D_ E_
Chinchilla: A_ B_ c(chd)_ D_ E_
Chocolate Chinchilla: A_ bb c(chd)_ D_ E_
Squirrel: A_ B_ c(chd)_ dd E_
Opal: A_ B_ C_ dd E_
Lynx: A_ bb C_ dd E_
NOTE: Tri can be Aa, A(t)a, A, A(t), or "aa" there is no affirmative "A" genetic for them unless parents can only give "aa"
Black and Golden Orange Tricolor: A_ B_ C_ D_ ej_ Enen
Chocolate and Golden Orange Tricolor: A_ bb C_ D_ ej_ Enen
Blue and Golden Cream Tricolor: A_ B_ C_ dd ej_ Enen
Lilac and Golden Cream Tricolor: A_ bb C_ dd ej_ Enen
Black Pointed White: aa B_ c(h)_ D_ E_
Chocolate Pointed White: aa bb c(h)_ D_ E_
Blue Pointed White: aa B_ c(h)_ dd E_
Lilac Pointed White: aa bb c(h)_ dd E_
Black: aa B_ C_ D_ E_
Blue: aa B_ C_ dd E_
Chocolate: aa bb C_ D_ E_
Lilac: aa bb C_ dd E_
Blue-Eyed White: v v
Ruby-Eyed White: cc
Sable Point: aa B_ c(chl)_ D_ ee
Siamese Sable: aa B_ c(chl)_ D_ E_
Seal: aa B_ c(chl)c(chl) D_ E_
Smoke Pearl: aa B_ c(chl)_ dd E_
Black Tortoise: aa B_ C_ D_ ee
Blue Tortoise: aa B_ C_ dd ee
Chocolate Tortoise: aa bb C_ D_ ee
Lilac Tortoise: aa bb C_ dd ee
Black Otter: a(t)_ B_ C_ D_ E_
Blue Otter: a(t)_ B_ C_ dd E_
Chocolate Otter: a(t)_ bb C_ D_ E_
Lilac Otter: a(t)_ bb C_ dd E_
Black Gold-Tipped Steel: A_ B_ C_ D_ E(s)E
Black Silver-Tipped Steel: A_ B_ c(chd)_ D_ E(s)E
Blue Gold-Tipped Steel: A_ B_ C_ dd E(s)E
Blue Silver-Tipped Steel: A_ B_ c(chd)_ dd E(s)E
Chocolate Gold-Tipped Steel: A_ bb C_ D_ E(s)E
Chocolate Silver-Tipped Steel: A_ bb c(chd)_ D_ E(s)E
Lilac Gold-Tipped Steel: A_ bb C_ dd E(s)E
Lilac Silver-Tipped Steel: A_ bb c(chd)_ dd E(s)E
Cream: A_ B_ C_ dd ee
Frosty: A_ B_ c(chd)_ D_ ee
Orange: A_ B_ C_ D_ ee
Red: A_ B_ C_ D_ ee ww (plus modifers)
We also have a color chart on our website. This will give you a visual of most of the recognized colors!
Thank you for taking our small class we genuinely hope this was a help to you!
~J.C.V Rabbitry
Bibliography:
Lots Of Lops Color Genotypes- http://www.lotsoflops.com/8203color-genotypes-of-all-recognized-holland-lop-varieties.html
Lots Of Lops-Holland Lops- http://www.lotsoflops.com/holland-lops.html
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