Holland Lops are a dwarf breed. However, not every Holland has the dwarf gene. Lance doesn't have the dwarf gene. This is why he is so big (he's over 5lbs!). MOST Hollands have one dwarf gene.
If you breed a Holland to another and they both have one dwarf gene, most of the babies will have one dwarf gene. Some will have no dwarf gene. And some will have two copies of the dwarf gene, and be a peanut.
A peanut is a kit with the double dwarf gene. It cannot grow. Peanuts will always die within a few days. Some peanuts can live to grow fur, and, extremely rarely, open their eyes. But they will always die. And while their siblings double their birth weight in just a first three or four days, the peanut will not grow, and will not thrive. They might even get smaller.
Peanuts are extremely small. Even at birth they are almost half the size of their normal siblings. They are very skinny, and have an almost "peanut" shape, with bulging nose and eyes, and bottom. Their ears are characteristically small compared to the rest of their body. In most kits, as you can see in the photos above, their ears are small but they are relative to their body size. Peanut ears are less than 1/4 the size of a normal kit's ears.
What are the chances of getting a peanut?
In a litter where the sire (father) and dam (mother) of the babies are both false dwarfs, you will get 100% false dwarfs.
If a true dwarf and false dwarf have kits, each kit will have a 50% chance of being a false dwarf, or a 50% chance of being a true dwarf. This does not mean that you will get half trues and half falses, this means that you could potentially get all true or all false or uneven numbers of both, or half of each. This is like there being four marbles in a bag, and drawing a marble to determine false/true, and then putting it back and drawing again. You never know what you're going to get!
If a true dwarf and a true dwarf have kits, their babies will have a 50% chance of being true dwarf, a 25% chance of being false dwarf, and a 25% chance of being a peanut. Theoretically, you could have a whole litter of peanuts. Or you could have a litter without peanuts. Most likely, you will have some normal/healthy kits, and peanuts. Read the paragraph above to see what it means that each kit has a chance at being false/true/peanut.
Peanut vs. Runt:
Peanuts will always die very soon. It's in their genetic makeup, sadly. Some people swear their "peanut" lived to be an adult and is just a small bunny (2lbs or less). However, that was not a peanut. It was a runt. Runts happen sometimes. The baby did not enough room in the womb to get bigger, or didn't get as much milk when it was a baby. Or maybe it's genetically small. But it's not a peanut. Even runts and peanuts look very different. Peanuts have a very distinct look.
Sadly, peanuts are a part of raising a dwarf breed. They are unavoidable if you are trying to raise and breed show rabbits. But since this was kind of a sad article, I will end with a cute picture of normal one-day-old babies.