The abilities of reproduction and resistance for some common diseases of New Zealand rabbits raized in Thai Nguyen province
 

Nguyen Quang Tuyen

Thai Nguyen Agricultural and Forestry University

Introduction

In recent years, the Vietnamese Husbandry branch have had a new way to ensure high food resources quality in the market and rabbit raising is one of many ways to resolve the matters of fresh and safety food resources and become important when the epidemic diseases of avian infuenza, PRRS are going to get more complicated in the whole country and some regions.

 In the world, rabbit raising was attached special importance to develop for meat, skin and feather a long time ago. Almost all these rabbit rasing in some conuntries had developed rapidly and achieved efficiencies solving three matters at the same time such as high breeds, easy technical care process for application, high product quality, processable and consumable rabbit products (Animal reproduction science - 75, 2003).

 China was the leading country on exporting rabbit meat in the world. Every year this country exported 40.000 tons rabbit meat to European market in the frozen meat. Italia, Begium, England, German and some Eastern Europe countries were the most countries of rabbits meat importing, of which Italia was the first and Begium was the second.

 In 2000, the Goat and Rabbit research center of Son Tay imported three purebred breeds which were Califonia, Panon, Newzealand White from Hungary with the number of 250. These three breeds quickly got used to Vietnamese conditions of raising, gave their high productivity much more than the others raised as before (Nguyen Quang Suc, 2003)

 In order to upgrade native rabbits reproduction, we carried out cross-breeding native female rabbits and foreign male rabbits for their F1 and F2 grade having high weight gain more than native rabbits from 20-30%, reproduction more than 20-25%. At present, in many regions in whole country, this cross-breeding method is widely being applied for hybrids with high adaptability being suitable to conditional enviroment and mode of raising in Viet Nam (Đinh Van Binh, 2003).

 Now adays, Viet Nam rank seventeen in the world on carcass output of 18.000 tons. The total of rabbits in the country estimated up to now around 350.000 heads, focus on some provinces with high quantities for instances Ha Tay, Ninh Binh, Dong Nai and the Nine Dragons River provinves zone (Rural magazine number 16).

 In some areas of Thai Nguyen province and neighbouring provinces, rabbits raising branch is strongly developing. However, the people still take some difficulties on breeds, care process, feeding, provent and treatment diseases for rabbits Almost of vetarinarian staff hadn't well knowledge for raising rabbits, that is why this considerably decreased the benefit. Therefore, researching the growth, reproduction and preventing some common diseases for rabbit herds at this time is necessary to find the best solution for rabbit raising branch development in Thai Nguyen province.

 Methodology

Subject of the study

Observe the reproduction, growth and some infectious diseases on Newzealand Rabbit and newborn rabbit (0-120 day old)

Prevent and treat some common diseases on the Herd of Newzealand Rabbit raising in Thai Nguyen

Methods

Dertermination of the Sample and Statistic treatment of Data

 The experiment were placed accodding to each treatments in the same condition. Rabbit individually kept, numbered, observed based on each rabbit families with rate of 1male/5 female.

The rabbit were directly crossed

Medicine and treatment: Using specific medicine for prevention and precaution.

The gathering data were analysed based on the common statistic method and the biological statistic method of  Nguyen Van Thien (1997)
 

Results and discussion

The reproduction of purebred rabbits

During the time observation of first 40 rabbit's reproduction, it said that the rutting age was 122 day and the rutting bodyweight was 3187 gr. According to the first rutting age of NZL rabbits grandparent generation imported in 2000 were 118 days, parent generation were 117 days (Khuc Thi Hue 2004). In comparison with above findings, the first rutting age of NZL rabbit in Thai Nguyen was longer while its rutting weight was lower. Like this, beside environmental factor as weather condition, care and bringing up in the farm were still not well in order that it lasted the time to rut of rabbits.

The rutting cycle was 13.9 days and the rutting time was 3.3 days. The first breeding age was 159 day when the breeding bodyweight achieved 3499 g/rabbit. The first breeding bodyweight of NZL Rabbit imported in 2000 was 3400 g whose one was lower than above observation result. Hence, the breeding selection satisfied the need of breed in production.

Based on the observation of reproductive rabbit herd, we carried out some reproductive norms and achieved some below result.

The rate of first conceiving of first reproductive cycle was 70.1 % and next cycle was  71.5 %.  

According to Dinh Van Binh (2003)  the rate of conceiving of  Vietnamese rabbit was 72.5% and NZL Rabbit newly imported was 75.5%. Our result was approximately lower from 2.4 % to 4.5 % on Vietnamese and NZL newly imported. .

Gestation time : No considerbable aberrancy in gestation time on the same rabbit breed but that was longer than 1 day for the firstlitter.

The number of newborn rabbits in the first and second litter  showed no clear difference for rabbits raised in Thanh Hoa.

The re-rutting time after giving offspring: was often around 2-3 days

The number of alive rabbit to the weaning was 6.0 and 5.8, in comparison with Dinh Van Binh (2003) {5] the number of alive rabbit till the weaning/ rabbit NZL was similarly 5.97. The number of litters/ year was 5.7 and the number of weaning rabbit/ female rabbit/ year was 30.15.

The growth of rabbits

The weight of Rabbit before weaning:

The result achieved of 360 rabbits in each breed from newborn day to 120 days.

The table showed that: newborn NZL rabbit body weight: 53.7gram/rabbit

Dinh Van Binh et al (2005) stated that : newborn NZL rabbit body weight imported in 2000 was 63.5 gram/rabbit, in comparison with his research on rabbit raising in Thai Nguyen was lower than NZL Rabbit imported in 2000 but it was higher than NZL Rabbit imported in 1978 by 8.67 gram.  Therefore, NZL Rabbit breed has adapted with weather condition in Thai Nguyen quite well.

The Rabbit bodyweight at 21 day old was 305 gram/rabbit. In comparison with NZL rabbit at the same day and the rabbit newly imported was 332gram/ rabbit (Dinh Van Binh (2003) this our result was lower nearly 32.2 gram/ rabbit.

The Rabbit bodyweight after the weaning period

Table 4 show absolute growth rate of rabbit was highest at the period of 30 to 60 day old, average weight gain in this period was 41.8 gram/day

In the period of 60 – 90 day old, absolute growth rate of Rabbit was reduced considerably in comparison with previous period. The bodyweight at 90 day old was 2277 gram/rabbit.

In the period of 90-120 day old, the growth was 30.4 gram/rabbit/day. The achieved result showed the growth of NZL rabbit raised in Thai Nguyen was rather high.

The rates of alive rabbit during periods of age

 Within duration from newborn day to 30 day, rabbit died with high rate (13.3%). The direct reason caused high dead rabbit rate at this duration because female rabbit took low milk volume so newborn rabbit could not suck, they were died by milk thirst

The rabbit died in duration of 30 to 60 day old with 7.67 %; in this duration most of rabbits were affected by digestive disease as Coccidiosis, diarrhoea, parasites...

In duration of 60-90 day old : rabbit was well adapted with environment so that the alive rabbit rate was higher than two previous duration, the alive rate achieved 95.83%.

In duration of 90-120 day old : Rabbit had vitality the most, the alive rate  could achieved 100% in good care conditions and feeding.

The infective state on Rabbit

The infective state in different periods

The result of 360 newborn rabbits and 288 rabbits after weaning. We showed it as below.

 In the duration of newborn day to 30 day old, the total of rabbits with scabies was 51 (14.16%);  this rate was higher than from 30-120 day old (12.15%).

Rabbits mainly got the digestive disease after weaning with rate of 11.9% and 9.02%, caused death with 5.28 % and 2.78% similarly. The main reason was suddenly food change, unbalanced diet, unhygienic food and water requirement.

The rate of Coccidiosis  newborn day to 30 day old was 22.8 %, from 30 to 120 day old was 10.06 % and the death rate  (14.17 and 1.04%)

However, in the observation time we could not find out any anemia case. It explained that prevention and mastering disease program from outside to farm achieved good efficiency.

The infective state of purebred rabbit’s parent.

Based on observation of 40 purebred female rabbit reproducing first and second litter data are in Table 6.

Scabies was the common disease in reproductive rabbit with rate of 10% and infected to newborn rabbits, made them infective with high rate (23.89).

The rate of rabbit’s parents  infected by Diarrhoea was 12.50%, the dead rate was 2.50%. In comparison with infective level on rabbit from duration of newborn day to 120 day old, it indicated that infective level on reproductive rabbits was lower.

The Coccidiosis was seasonal disease and depended on the age clearly. Rabbit only infect after 15 day old, and they often do in Spring with high infection (22.50%) and the dead rate was 5.0 %.

With the Anemia, due to using vaccine VHD injected 2 times/ year. That brought high prevention of Anemia for 100% purebred parents rabbit.

The result of treatment on experimental rabbit

We treated the diseases in rabbit infected (Table 7).

When finding that rabbit got Scabies, they were treated by Ivemectin with dosage of 0.5 ml/ 2kg once under their skin. The medicine had medical properties during 1 week 97.80%

The medicine used to treat Coccidioses was Vinacoc ACB mixed with crude food based on dosage of 2 gram/ 1 kg food/ 20kg LW/ day. Continous feeding 3 to 5 days, the recovery rate was 53.33%.

The Rabbit digestive diseases frequently observed were stomach ache, enteritis, diarrhoea due to unhygienic food and water or unbalanced mixed diet. Besides some other factors as high moisture, temperature, low cage, draught... 74 infective rabbits were treated by Narfacoly combining with additional feeding of some leaf such as : Guava bub, jachfruit leaf, duckweed leaf... the recovery rate was 63.16%

To sum up, the treatment progress makes sure enhancing infective animal physical strength by high nutritional diet and mixing with medical strengthen, medical health as B-Complex, Vitamin C, Glucose.. to enhance treatment efficiency

Conclusion

• About the reproductive physiology of female breeding rabbit of NZL: Age and the weight of first breeding were 159 day and 3499 gram. The first conceiving achieved 70.1 % and 71.5% for next litter. The number of newborn rabbit/ litter of first litter was higher than next litter. Newborn bodyweight/ rabbit, the alive rabbit rate to weaning period in first litter were also higher than the next litter. The litters/year and the number of weaning rabbit/litter/year were 5.7/year and 30.15/female rabbit/year.

• Rabbits were infected by Coccidiosis with high rate in the period before the weaning (22.8%), on the family breed infected 22.50%. 11,94% rabbits had diarrhoea in the period of newborn day to 60 day old, the death rate in this period was 5.28 ; in the period of 30 to 60 day old, the rate of rabbit infected by Diarrhoea was 9.02% and deaths 2.78%. On the breeding female, the rate of infection and death due to diarrhoea were 12.50 % and 2.50 %.

Bibliography                                   

Animal Reproduction Science, 75-2003. Pp. 107-109.

Rural newspaper Number 1; October, 9, 2003.

Dinh Van Binh 2003: Technical New Zealand Rabbit production and Hybrid rabbit for the family.  Ha Noi Agricultural Publishing House.

Dinh Van Binh, Nguyen Quang Suc 2005: Technical Goat and Rabbit production in farmer household.

Nguyen Quang Suc 2003: Some common Rabbit and wild animal diseases regarding to environment and human health.

Nguyen Van Thien 1997: Method of Statistic in  animal husbandry, Ha Noi Agricultural Publishing House.

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