Using different levels of canola seed in growing rabbit diets [electronic resource].

Includes references.

A total number of sixty mixed sex New Zealand White (NZW) rabbits at four weeks of age with an average initial body weight of 576g were used to study the effects of using different levels of canola seed (CS) on growth performance, digestibility of nutrients, blood parameters, carcass traits, hepatic fatty acid profile and economic traits. Rabbits were randomly assigned to five experimental groups of twelve rabbits with three replicates of four animals each. The first group was fed the control diet without CS while the second, third, fourth and fifth groups were fed diets containing 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0% CS, respectively. Rabbits fed 7.5% CS gave higher live body weight and body weight gain followed by those fed 2.5% CS significantly (P<0.05) compared with the control group. Using canola seed at the level of 7.5% improved (P<0.01) feed conversion ratio, whereas, there were no significant differences in daily feed consumption between all tested groups. Concerning nutrients digestibility, rabbits fed 10.0% CS gave the highest value (P<0.01) for ether extract, and better digestibility coefficients for most nutrients (P<0.05) compared with the control group, while there were no significant differences in digestible crude protein (DCP) and total digestible nutrients (TDN) among different groups. There were no significant differences in dressing percentage at 12 weeks of age among different groups, but the highest kidney fat weight percentage (P<0.05) was obtained with the group fed 10.0% CS. The inclusion of canola seed at the level of 10.0% reduced both plasma total lipids and plasma triglycerides (P<0.01) and gave lower plasma cholesterol value among tested groups except the control group. The total unsaturated fatty acid percentage of liver tissue was increased linearly as the dietary level of canola seed increase to get the highest value with the group fed 10.0% CS. In conclusion, the results revealed that using canola seed up to 7.5% in growing NZW rabbit diets had no any detrimental effects on productive performance, and would be used economically compared with the other experimental treatments.

Summary in Arabic.

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