Sources of Carbohydrates for Growing Rabbits

Sen Sorphea and T R Preston*

Center for Livestock and Agriculture Development (CelAgrid)
Kandal province, Cambodia
sorphea_sen@yahoo.com

^*TOSOLY, UTA-Colombia, AA#48, Socorro, Santander, Colombia

Abstract

The experiment was carried out at Kampong Cham National School of Agriculture from August 11 to September 15, 2008. A completely randomized block design with 4 treatments: Water Spinach alone (control), Water Spinach supplement with Banana, Water Spinach supplement with Sweet Potato Root and Water Spinach supplement with Sugar Cane Stalk. There are 4 replicates with 16 weaned rabbits and 730 kg live weigh gain was confined individual cages.

The intake of dry matter (DM) of the controlling treatment is much higher intake of water spinach leaves and stem. In contrast the treatment that provides the supplement the intake of water spinach leaves and stem is lower because rabbit eat more supplements of banana and sweet potato root.

Crude protein (CP) is much higher from the water spinach leave. The growth rate is much higher in controlling treatment if we compare with other treatment.

Moreover the growth rate is quite similar among the treatment that provide the banana and sweet potato root as supplement.

The feed conversion ratio is much higher when we supply the water spinach. In addition, if we feed only the water spinach the rabbit growth well.

Key Words: supplement, carbohydrate, rabbit,

Introduction

Livestock are very important for supporting human life. Due to bird flue, some people prefer eating the meat from rabbits. Rabbits are the new alternative for food and job for farmers.  Therefore, the price of rabbit meat increases remarkably in the market. Thus rabbit production is increasing, but there are problems because of cost of commercial feed. In Europe some rabbit farms are closed because the profit and expense has no balance, farmers spend more money on the very expensive commercial feed, because they forget to think about the local plant that they use everyday as the feed for both human and animals. In addition, local feed resources are very important because it contains a lot of protein source. Using local feed for animals is the best way because it is easy to find and spend less money. Food such as banana, sugar cane stalk, sweet potato and water spinach have potential as feed for rabbits.

Water spinach is easy to plant and has a very high yield of biomass (Phiny 2007), which is rich in protein for rabbit. Water spinach is a vegetable for human and animal that contains a very high level of protein. Moreover it is easy to plant and has a short growth period. It can be harvested in dry or flood period. It is resistant to common insect pests. In addition, it has been found that water spinach is a vegetable with a high potential to efficiently convert nitrogen from biodigester effluent into edible biomass with high protein content (Kean Sophea and Preston 2001).

In 100g of sweet potato root there are 20 g of carbohydrates and 4.2 g of sugar. (USDA 2006). Sweet potato roots have a delicate skin that is very easily broken, so the flesh also is easily bruised, broken or cut, which makes for good conditions for bacteria to attack, resulting in the sweet potato decaying (Hoang 2004). The typsin inhibitors in raw sweet potato roots decrease protein digestibility, but they can be destroyed by booking (Martinez et al 1991)

Feeding sugar cane stalk reduced acetate content and increased propionate and butyrate contents in rumen fluid.

Hypothesis

Sweet potato root supported higher feed intake and live weight gain than banana fruit or sugar cane stalk when used as a supplement in a basal diet of water spinach.

Objective

• To evaluate the various source of carbohydrate in feed on growth performance of rabbits.

Materials and Methods

Location

A total of 16 rabbit cages were prepared at Kampong Cham National School of
Agriculture which is located approximately 125 km North East of Phnom Penh city. This experiment was carried out from 11 August to 15 September, 2008.

Experimental animal

16 young rabbits with average body weight 730g were confined in individual cages constructed by wood and bamboo.

Animal housing

The cages were made from wood and bamboo with length of 0.5 m, width of 0.5 m and height of 0.9 m. Under the cages, the net was stretch out to keep the residue of each cages. On the top we made the gate that can open and close for feeding (Photo 1).

Experimental Design

The experiment was designed as a CRBD with four treatments and 4 replicates per treatment. Water spinach is used as a basal diet and Sweet Potato Root, Banana, Sugar Cane Stalk as the supplementation. The treatments are as follows (Photos 2 to 5):

• WS:                 Water Spinach

• WS-SC:           Water Spinach + Sugar Cane Stalk

• WS-SP:           Water Spinach + Sweet Potato root

• WS-Ba:            Water Spinach + Banana

Feeding and Management

The studied lasted for nearly 6 weeks (35 days). Water spinach was purchased from water spinach plantation grown from water and hang with wire before feeding. The stalk of sugar cane was peel and split longitudinally into two pieces (length 15cm). Banana fruit will be cut into two pieces. Sweet potato root will be purchased from the market and cleaned before chopping into pieces. All this feed was weighed before feed the rabbits. The feed was offered ad libitum two times every day, at 7:00 AM, and at 4:30 PM. Water was not provided. The cages cleaned everyday after collecting the residue.

Data collection

Feed offered were weighted and recorded daily before feeding to the rabbits. Moreover, the residue was separated between the leaves and the stem and weighted every morning before feeding. The rabbits were weighed every 5 days and residue was analyzed for DM.  Water spinach was separated into leaf and stem to calculate the proportions in order to know the proportion between the leaves and stem intake. On the other hand, the supplement of Sweet Potato, Banana and Sugar Cane Stalk were also analyzed   for DM and CP. Feed offered and residues also was analyzed for DM, CP and ash by microwave radiation (Undersander et al 1993), N (AOAC 1990).

Statistical analysis

The data was analyzed of variance using the General Linear Model (GLM) option of the MINITAB software (Release 13.31, 2000). The source of variation was treatment and error.

Result and Discussion

Feed Characteristics 

In this table, it shows about the feed component in water spinach, banana, sweet potato root and sugar cane stalk after analyze in laboratory. By using the Hand Refractometer we found the sugar contain as in table 1.

Growth and feed conversion

The table 2 shows the DM and CP intake of the rabbits in each treatment. There was non-significant difference between each treatment.

Feed Intake

The rabbits selected more of the leaves than the stems (Figure 1) because it contains a lot of crude protein 29.90 %, in stem contains 12.60 % of crude protein (Table 1).

The graph shows that the proportion of water spinach decreases when we supply the banana, sugar cane stalk and sweet potato. The rabbit eat more of banana and sweet potato root (figure 1), but get very low in crude protein (figure 2). When the rabbits eat banana they feel full because of the carbohydrate. Moreover the banana and sweet potato root contains quite low of protein (2.10 % and 1.81%). Both green and ripe banana are particularly deficient in lysine and in the sulphur- containing amino acids. Refer to Manfredimi et al 1993; sweet potato roots have very high carbohydrate content, mainly starch, but low amounts of proteins and minerals and almost no fat.

In the controlling treatment, the rabbit prefer select the water spinach leave than stem (figure 1). According to figure 2, we found that the leaves of water spinach contain higher protein (29.90%) than in stem (12.60%).

Live Weight Gain

This table shows the growth performing and feed conversion during experiment. The live weight gain is non-significant between treatments and the same in the feed conversion.

Live Weight Gain and Feed Conversion

In the control treatment, the gain weight of the rabbit was higher than other treatment (Table 2). According to this result we found that if we provide the water spinach the live weigh gain was higher. If we compare the control treatment with the supplement of sugar cane stalk treatment we found that it was quite low gain weigh. Because the carbohydrate that contains in sugar cane stalk provide only the energy for rabbit. The treatments that provide the sweet potato root and banana as the supplement the gain weigh quite similar. Sweet potato root contained low crude protein, fat and fiber. Carbohydrate makes up 80 to 90% of the dry matter.

The water spinach treatment was better than other treatment. When we feed water spinach the rabbit gain weigh better than other treatment. In contrast, the treatments that provided the water spinach supplementation with banana the rabbit gain weigh not good as water spinach. The water spinach treatment growth rate 19.6g/day with the feed conversion rate 2.62 quite similar to Pok Samkol et al (2006) the growth rate 14-20g/day with DM feed conversion between 3.38 and 5.18 and higher than Hongthong Phimmasan et al (2004) 18g/day) in Lao.

Economical analysis

The cost of feed is shown as economic analysis for the experimental in Table below.

Improving of the economic efficiency, as well as using of local available feed is the most important resources for feeding rabbits. It was the point that we have to think in the present. Because if we use the supplement feed for growing rabbits, it means that we reduce some of basal diet feed. Water spinach is cheap and available in both season, but the people also use it as the food consumption for living. Beside this, farmers can use banana, sweet potato root and sugar cane stalk as the supplement feed.

The useful of using supplement  

The purpose of using supplement is that for supporting the fattening of animals by  providing concentrate feed such as protein, vitamin. If we use the supplement feed to animals we can reduce some amount of basal diet or complete of lacking nutrition in the body. When we provide the water spinach it contains a lot of protein. Moreover the protein not provides enough energy so carbohydrate is the most important source of energy for the rabbits. Using the carbohydrate source is good for rabbit raising. The carbohydrate provided high carbohydrate which is the source of energy for rabbit. It is a good choice if we provided the sweet potato root for rabbit and the price is acceptable for farmer. We can use the sugar cane stalk as the supplement, normally we can grow and find everywhere. We keep the soft part for the human consumption and the hard part keep for the rabbit.

Conclusion

• According to the result, the intake of water spinach is higher than other supplement. So it is suitable for applying to rabbits. Moreover, the crude protein in water spinach is higher for supporting of growing rabbits. On the other hand, using the source of carbohydrate (sweet potato root) is also good for the growing rabbit.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thanks the MEKARN program, financed by Sida/SAREC for supporting this mini-project. We are very grateful to say thank you to doctor Preston TR, Do Van Xe, Mr Chhay Ty and Ms Latsamy for all their great help and support during the experiment. Thanks are given to the staff, students of Kampong Cham National School of Agriculture and classmates of Mekarn course 2008-2010 for helping to carry out this research.

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