The effect of symbiotic drenching mixture on the ingestive behavior, productive performance, blood biochemical parameters and carcass traits of growing rabbits

Abstract EN

Stressors that originated from intensive housing of young rabbits during the growing period have bad effects on rabbit performance and health status.

A total of forty-five apparently healthy New Zealand White rabbits were used to investigate the effect of drenching of symbiotic mixture on the behavior, productive performance, blood biochemistry and carcass criteria of growing rabbits.

They were allocated into two groups} 1st: control (n=21) and 2ed treated) (n=24) and both groups were housed under conventional cage system.

The treated group was weekly drenched by 40mg/rabbit/day (200g/1000liter) symbiotic mixture which was dissolved in 5ml distilled water, while the control group received only 5ml distilled water through the drench and all solutions were at room temperature.

Video recording of behaviors were done weekly, in addition to determination of rabbit’s body weight and feed intake.

At the end of the experiment 10 rabbits from each group were slaughtered for blood biochemical analysis and carcass traits evaluation.

The obtained results revealed that there was a significant increase in body weight and body weight gain of the drenched group than control one, however, the feed intake, feed conversion ratio and performance index were decreased in the treated rabbits.

Drenched rabbits have a significant (P≤0.05) higher total proteins, albumin, and globulin and AL/GL ratio than control groups.

The behavior of treated animals showed a significant (P≤0.05) increase in feeding duration (min.) and drinking frequency and duration (min.).

This study concluded that drenching of growing rabbits a symbiotic mixture results in improvement of their ingestive behavior, performance and blood biochemical parameters.