Tropentag, September 19 - 21, 2012 in Göttingen "Resilience of agricultural systems against crises"

Evaluation of Growth Indices, Dry Matter Digestibility and Economic Implications of Feeding Rabbits with Millet Offal

¹Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo, Ondo State, Nigeria, Department of Agricultural Science, Nigeria
²Federal University of Technology, Department of Animal Production and Health, Nigeria
³University of Calabar, Calabar, Dept. of Animal Science, Nigeria

Abstract

A 56-day feeding trial was carried out to evaluate the potential of replacing maize in the diets of rabbits with millet offal, an agricultural waste, on the performance indices and cost benefit of growing rabbits. Fifty growing rabbits of cross breeds and mixed sexes were allotted to five dietary treatments of 10 rabbits per treatment in a completely randomised design. A rabbit was taken as a replicate. Millet offal was used to replace maize grain at 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100% in diets 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, respectively. The response criteria included growth indices, carcass cuts, haematology, serum metabolites, apparent digestibility and economic benefit. The final body weight of 1.72-1.81 kg and total weight gain of 0.99-1.04 kg of rabbits on the control diet was not significantly (p>0.05) different from those fed the millet offal diets. The total feed consumption was significantly (p<0.05) affected by the dietary treatment with rabbits fed on the control diet having the highest value (4.02 kg) and rabbit fed on 75% millet offal-based diet having the least value (3.31 kg). Compared with the control group, rabbits fed on 25-100% millet offal-based diets had improved feed converion rate of 10.5, 12.5, 17.5 and 18.3% over those fed the control. The apparent digestibility values suggested that millet offal could be tolerated by rabbits even up to 100% (i.e. 47.46 g per 100 g in the gross feed composition) inclusion level, as this level considerably decreased in cost of feed per kilogram weight gain and improved relative cost benefit by up to 52.3%. The slaughter weight, fasting loss and carcass ‘fast cut' were not significantly different between groups (p>0.05). Of the entire haematological variables measured, only the WBC, MCH and MCV were significantly (p<0.05) influenced by the test diets while increased serum protein and blood glucose and decreased total cholesterol were observed in the animals fed on 50-100% millet offal diets. Thus, replacing maize with millet offal could lead to better affordability of rabbit meat by resource poor people, better animal protein production/consumption and ultimately improved savings of rabbit farmers.

Keywords: Digestibility, economic implications, maize, millet offal, rabbit

Contact Address: J. Oluwasola Agbede, Federal University of Technology, Department of Animal Production and Health, Off Ilesa Road, Akure, Nigeria, e-mail: joagbedeyahoo.com