Growth, apparent nutrients digestibility, organ weights and blood profile of rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus Linn.) fed fungal treated maize husk based-diets

Abstract

Performance, organs weight, apparent nutrient digestibility and blood profile of growing rabbits fed graded dietary levels of fungal treated maize husk (FTMH) based diets were assessed in this study. In a completely randomised design, rabbits (n = 80) were assigned to five treatments each replicated four times with four rabbits per replicate. Wheat offal was replaced with FTMH at 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100% in rabbit diets and fed for 59 days. At day 56, blood (5 mL) was sampled for blood analyses. Five rabbits were selected and carefully dissected into prima cuts. organs, internal and external offals'. Data on performance indices, apparent nutrients digestibilities, proximate and crude fibre fractions of the diets were analysed. The FTMH based diets significantly improved (P<0.05) final weight and daily weight gain of rabbits. The FCR of rabbits (3.31, 3.27, 3.50, 3.15 and 3.90 for rabbits on T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5, respectively), differed significantly (P<0.05). Apparent digestibility of nutrients was significantly improved (P<0.05) by increased FTMH based diets. Serum protein, albumin and globulin were significantly (P<0.05) affected by dietary treatments with values ranging from 7.30 – 7.80 g/dL, 2.5 – 2.80 g/dL and 4.70 – 5.30 g/dL, respectively. Increased dietary FTMH reduced serum cholesterol significantly (P<0.05). Urea (mg/dL) ranged from 30 – 32 and creatinine (mg/dL) from 0.50 to 1.20. Observations from the present study suggests that FTMH could replace wheat offal at 25-75% without any deleterious effect on performance, apparent digestibility of nutrients and the blood profile.