PERFORMANCE AND COST BENEFIT OF WEANER RABBITS FED FOUR DIFFERENT DIETARY ENERGY SOURCES

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at the Teaching and Research Farm, College of Agriculture, Bauchi to study the performance and cost benefit of using four different energy sources in weaner rabbit diets. Four diets containing maize, dauro millet, red sorghum and white sorghum were formulated and designated as diets 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively. A total of thirty-two (32) Mongrel rabbits weighing between 869.00 – 889.00g were randomly allocated to the four dietary treatments in replicates of four containing two rabbits each in a completely randomized design (CRD). Each replicate was served 100g of the diet and 500ml of water daily. Data on daily feed intake, weight gain, feed conversion ratio and mortality were recorded. The results of the experiment indicated no significant effect of diet on performance indices. Final weight of rabbits ranges between 1968.75 and 2013g on diets 1 and 3 respectively. Daily feed intake (DFI) was from 97.34g (diet 2) to 98.12g (diet 1) while daily weight gain was between 19.64g (diet 1) and 20.24g (diet 3). Feed conversion ratio which was also not significantly affected, was between 4.84 and 4.99 on diets 2 and 1 respectively. Feed cost/kg was lowest on diet 2 (N149.11) and highest on diet 1 (N156.82). Feed cost/kg gain was lowest on diet 3 (N723.12) and highest on diet 1 (N782.67) while diet 3 (59.55) had the highest cost saving. It was therefore concluded that red sorghum can replace maize in weaner rabbit diets without any negative effect on performance. Furthermore, the use of red sorghum in weaner rabbit diets reduced feed cost and is recommended for rabbit production in the study area.