Effects of dietary fat supplementation on growth performance of early weaned rabbit

Abstract

The present study was carried out to evaluate the effect of dietary supplementation of soybean oil (SBO) to increase neutral detergent fiber (NDF) contents on growth performance (GP), nutritive values (NV) and carcass quality of growing New Zealand White (NZW) rabbits. A total sixty, 5 weeks old male weaned rabbits of mixed breeds with a mean body weight of 774.42g were randomly allocated to four dietary groups of 15 rabbits each. Experimental groups were fed diets supplemented with 0, 1, 2 &3% fat. The feeding trial lasted for 6 weeks. Growth performance parameters as body weight (BW), feed intake (FI) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) were determined every week. At the end of the experiment (8 weeks), 6 rabbits from each group were randomly taken, weighted and slaughtered to complete bleeding. The rabbits from each treatment were dressed, eviscerated samples taken for determination of moisture, CP, EE and ash contents. The obtained results revealed that supplementation of SBO in diets NZW rabbits up to 2% improve BW and FCR and didn’t significantly affect the feed intake. However, supplementation of 3% SBO in diets of NZW rabbits did not significantly increased the BW and weight gain (BWG), FI and FCR. Fat supplementation didn’t affect the dressing carcass percent & internal organs weight. The present study concluded that supplementation of SBO in diets NZW rabbits up to 2% significantly improve the growth performance and body composition.