Rabbit Conformation Faults of the Crown

The crown of a rabbit is the basal ridge of cartilage at the top of the head which forms the ear base on some of the lop eared breeds.  You can see the strongly-defined crown on the French Lop in the top picture  →

The crown affects the rabbit's ear placement and look, and although each of the lop eared breeds have different ears, each must have good crown conformation in order to achieve their correct ear placement.

A good crown will be prominent, wrap completely around the top of the rabbit's skull and extend all the way down to just behind the eye, where the ear will ideally begin.  A good crown will also be wide enough to appear balanced and offer the ear a wide starting base so the ear can hang flat against the cheeks.

Lop crowns are commonly measured or referred to as in the diagram to your left.

They are not actually 'measured', as in a linear measurement.

The green measurement is called the side-to-side width, and some call it the ear-to-ear width.  The side-to-side width affects the ear positioning and ear control.

The white measurement is called the front-to-back width and affects the ear base and ear opening.

Following are some common faults of the lop  crowns:

Tight Crown:  From side-to-side

A 'tight crown from side-to-side' is not long enough, stopping short above the eye instead of coming down to behind the eye.

Look again at the French Lop at the top of the page - you can see his crown wraps all the way around his head to down behind his eyes.  Because his crown is correct, his ears start at or below his eyes and hang down well according to the breed standard.

The Holland Lop to the right has a tight crown from side-to-side.  The crown stops way above the eye instead of coming down to the back of her eye.

The most prominent indicator of this fault, is that the rabbit will have too much ear control - some call it 'helicopter ears' or 'airplane ears'.  As you can see, she's got a nice case of airplane ears.  This is a common fault in Holland Lops.

Crowns do develop and change along with the head, as the animal matures, for up to about 18 months.  So sometimes, a young Holland with a tight crown will 'grow out' of this fault.

Tight Crown - Front to Back

A 'tight crown from front to back' means the crown appears narrow, width-wise.  A narrow crown will not make a nice wide base for the start of the ear.  Instead, the narrow base will make the ear start out folded or almost tubular in appearance.  Below I'll use a couple of French Lops to show you this fault - keep in mind, both these rabbits have several faults, but I'll only point out their crown faults.

The first rabbit in the picture to your right has a nice wide crown and the ear is very open from the crown all the way down.

The broken rabbit in the far picture has too narrow of a crown - you can see that the first couple inches of his ear, where it leaves the crown, appears tubular with the edges folded under - the ear doesn't have a chance to 'open flat' until part way down the ear.

A tight crown from front to back doesn't always produce an ear fault - sometimes the crown just isn't wide enough to balance with the side-to-side width or it doesn't balance with the shape and size of the animal's head.

Slipped Crown

If you draw an imaginary line from the back corner of one eye, up over the head, to the back corner of the opposite eye -the crown should follow that same path or be within a 'pencil's width' behind that imaginary line. 

The doe to your right has a slipped crown.  Her crown starts too far back behind her eyes.  .Ideally, the crown will be placed so the edge of the ear/crown hair falls over the back corner of the eye, giving the impression that the rabbit is almost peeking out from behind the ear.

Good Holland Lop Crowns

Here is a Holland Lop with a decent crown This boy was one of those rabbits that started out with a very tight crown but it grew with his head and it ended up being quite nice.  I would like to see it a bit more forward and would like it to wrap around his head a little more than it does, but it's not bad at all.

Holland Lops are notorious for poor crown development and this fault also seems to be very unpredictable - you can breed together rabbits with excellent crowns and some of the offspring will still have faulted crowns!  It takes time to find rabbits with strong genes for good crown development. 

Indeed, it is a fault I am working on in my own line-which is why I don't have a good example of what I think is a perfect Holland Lop crown!!

French Lops on the other hand, don't seem to be plagued with many crown problems, and the ones that do pop up seem minor and very easy to 'breed out' of a line.