Effect of Dietary Urea Molasses Multi-Nutrient Cake (UMMC) on Productive and Reproductive Performance of Rabbit

Abstract

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of dietary supple-mentation of urea molasses multi-nutrient cake (UMMC) on productive and reproductive performances of rabbit. In Experiment-I, 80 rabbit does (age 24 weeks) were randomly assigned into four dietary treatment groups (T0, T1, T2 and T3) to investigate the effect of UMMC on the reproductive performances whereas in Experiment-II, 112 young rabbits (age 5 weeks) were also randomly assigned into another four dietary treatment groups to investigate the effect of UMMC on the productive performance. The rabbits of four dietary treatment groups (T0, T1, T2 and T3) in both experiments were fed 0%, 4%, 6% and 8% urea containing UMMC, respectively. The results revealed that the dietary supplementation of UMMC increased (P < 0.05) live weight of pregnant does, conception rate, litter size, and litter weight and individual kit weight at weaning. On the other hand, UMMC supplementation reduced (P < 0.05) the kit mortality, though it did not affect the gestation period, litter size, litter weight and individual kit weight at birth. Dietary UMMC supplementation also improved (P < 0.05) the productive performances of growing rabbits in terms of live weight gain, feed conversion ratio and performance index by almost same amount of feed intake. On the contrary, blood parameters (Hb, PCV and ESR) were not affected by the UMMC except for red blood cell and white blood cell counts, but were within their normal range indicating the safe use of UMMC. UMMC also increased (P < 0.05) the fecal bacterial population. Production cost of UMMC was around 0.19 USD less in each kg of feed than the commercial pellet. In both of the experiments rabbits fed 6% urea containing UMMC showed best result than control and other treatment groups as well.