Abstrakt

Effect of feeding mango leaf and time of concentrate feeding on the performance and carcass characteristics of growing rabbit’s bucks.

Abel IO, David NA, Silvanus NC

An 84-day feeding trial was conducted using 36 rabbits with the aim of studying effect of time of feeding concentrate on the performance and carcass characteristics of growing rabbits fed mango leaves as basal diet. The experimental animals were randomly allocated to three feeding time regimes (T1-animals fed concentrate in the morning (7: 00 am), T2-animals fed concentrate in the afternoon (12:00 noon) and T3-animals fed concentrate in the evening (6: 000 pm)) and replicated twelve times in a completely randomised design. Concentrates were fed 30 percent of the body live weights of the animals. Results of the analytical experiment showed that there were no significant (p>0.05) differences among treatments in the final body weight gain, mean total body weight gain and total feed intake of the experimental rabbits. There were no significant (p>0.05) differences in the fasted weight, carcass weight, slaughter weight and dressing percentage as well as the relative weights of heart, kidney, liver, spleen and lungs among treatment groups. It is obvious from the result of this study that the time of feeding concentrate has no effect in the performance and carcass characteristics of growing rabbits.