Agriculturae Conspectus Scientificus, Vol 78, No 3 (2013)

Increasing Dietary Energy with Starch and Soluble Fibre and Reducing ADF at Different Protein Levels for Growing Rabbits

Marco TAZZOLI, Marco BIROLO, Eirini FILIOU, Angela TROCINO, Andrea ZUFFELLATO, Gerolamo XICCATO

Pages: 235-239

Summary


The effect of increasing dietary energy by increasing both starch (14% to 20%) and soluble fibre (9.6% to 11.6%) and decreasing ADF content (21% to 13%) at two crude protein levels (14% and 15%) was assessed on health, growth performance, caecal fermentative activity, gut mucosa traits, and carcass and meat quality of growing rabbits reared from 34 to 76 days of age. At weaning, 306 rabbits were divided into six groups and fed ad libitum six diets formulated according to a bi-factorial arrangement with 3 (starch+soluble fibre)/ADF ratio (L=1.2; M=1.8; H=2.8) x 2 protein levels. The contemporary increase of dietary starch and soluble fibre and the reduction of ADF linearly increased the digestibility of dry matter, energy and all nutrients, decreased feed intake and improved feed conversion (3.65 to 2.76 in rabbits fed diets L and H; P

Keywords


starch; soluble fibre; insoluble fibre; protein; growing rabbits

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