I had two Netherland dwarf sibling bunnies from 29 October 2022 – 21 April 2023. Maple, the harlequin female passed away from an evil parasite that we didn’t know she had until it was way too late. Lunar, her blue-eyed brother was put down a few days later because he had the same symptoms, and was urinating fluro yellow urine. It totally destroyed me and tore a hole in my soul to lose two precious 7 month old babies in a matter of 4 days.

Anyway, I was brave enough to look at old photos from Maple and Lunar and I noticed something about Lunar’s eyes… That’s what this journal entry is about.

Rabbit eye colours are a topic of their own, but I’ve always liked blue-eyed bunnies, because they look cute. I didn’t realise that Lunar had blue eyes until I collected him from the breeder. I had a nice surprise.

Ok, so his right eye stayed blue without any brown markings appearing on it. People call the brown markings on a blue eye “magpie”.

In 20-ish days, his left eye went from clear blue to this, marked with brown.

I know some of you may be thinking… yeah but some eyes change colour… yes that is true. But I took Lunar and Maple to the vet to get desexed, and when I picked them up, the vet said that he checked Lunar’s eye with the light. He said that he could see a mass like a tumor behind the eye, and I could think about getting it looked at by a small animal eye specialist (if I wanted to spend a lot of money).

I was considering it, but it was never going to work out that simply.

If you notice that your rabbit’s eyes change like this, do something about it. Talk to your vet to see what they can do. It was clearly a tumor behind his eye, because you can see that it’s pushing his eye out. That would have caused pain, which means my precious little man had a constant headache.

Has anyone thought that “magpie” eyes may not be as good as they think?