My Blue Eyed White Holland Lop Rabbitry -A Dream 17 Years in the Making

Starting a blue eyed white Holland Lop Rabbitry has been a longstanding dream of mine (since I was 12 years old!) and I am so pleased to announce that I have started one! If you want to cut to the chase and see the Rabbitry, follow the link below:

I got my very first rabbit around ten or eleven, a Holland Lop, “Honey Muffin”. She was, PERFECT.

Orange and small and SO SOFT.

The moment I brought her home it was game over. I was hooked.

A Childhood Full of Holland Lops

I was one of those kids who was animal-obsessed. I had dogs, cats, horses, a hamster and yes, LOTS of rabbits.

Through my teenage years I had 7 of them, and every single one was a Holland Lop.

What hooked me was their temperament. Holland Lops are sweet, curious, and gentle, with more personality packed into four pounds than seems fair.

Their size mattered too, then and now. They’re a smaller breed, so they fit comfortably into small spaces, which suited my life as a teenager where they were only allowed to roam my room, and they’re size also suits my family’s small (840 square feet) home now.

If you’re new to the breed and want to understand what makes a good one, the Holland Lop Rabbit Specialty Club lays out the breed standard beautifully. Reading it as an adult brought back every reason I loved these rabbits in the first place.

The Years I Had to Step Away

Here’s the part of the story that explains the long gap. When I was twenty, I started dealing with health issues, and they were serious enough that keeping pets of any kind became impossible. For a long stretch, the energy a rabbit needs from its owner was energy I simply didn’t have.

That was hard. Loving animals and being unable to care for them is its own quiet kind of grief. So the dream went back into storage. I was in survival mode for so long I couldn’t even dream anymore…

Last year, everything shifted. I finally received a diagnosis, and getting on the right medication gave me back an enormous amount of energy. Suddenly I could do the things I’d missed for years: keep a garden, take my kids out to do fun things, and yes, bring animals back into our home. My health returning has been a complete, utter in incredibly welcome paradigm shift.

Turning a Lifelong Dream Into a Real Rabbitry

Once I had the energy back, starting a Blue eyed white Holland Lop rabbitry stopped being a fantasy and became a plan. I approached it like a real business from the start, writing out costs, herd composition, and how we’d reach families beyond our own town.

I settled on two lines that captured me early: Blue-Eyed Whites and Vienna-marked rabbits. The Blue-Eyed White carries the Vienna gene, giving a pure white coat with striking blue eyes. Working with these lines responsibly means health testing and careful pairing, and I dove into the genetics the way I once dove into rabbit books as a kid.

The welfare side always comes first, though. For anyone considering the same path, the House Rabbit Society is a wonderful grounding in care before you ever think about pedigrees.

The name took a while. I wanted something warm and a little musical, and after a lot of discarded options, Rhythm & Bleu finally clicked. The “Bleu” nods to those blue eyes I work so hard for.

We’re based in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, just outside Tulsa, though a small rabbitry doesn’t have to stay local. Reliable transporters run regular routes across the country, so a family several states away can still bring home one of our bunnies. If you’d like to see what we’re building, our rabbitry lives at Rhythm & Bleu.

Why Holland Lops, Still, After All These Years

People sometimes ask why I didn’t branch out to another breed after all this time. The answer is simple. Everything that made me love Holland Lops at eleven is still true.

They’re affectionate and easy to bond with. They’re compact enough to thrive in a modest home, which matters a lot when your house is on the smaller side. And they’re a joy to raise, both for a family wanting a pet and for someone like me who cares about doing right by the breed. I can’t forget to add: THEY ARE SO CUTE.

Registering with a group like the American Rabbit Breeders Association keeps me breeding toward a recognized standard rather than guessing.

Come Follow Along

This blog has always been where I share the things I’m building, and so many years of waiting, the rabbitry might be the chapter I’m proudest of. If any of this resonates, or you’ve loved Holland Lops yourself, come visit Rhythm & Bleu and follow along. Our first litter is planned for this fall, and I’d love to have you there for it.