Response of growth rate in rabbits to paddy rice given as a supplement to either water spinach or water hyacinth leaves                            

Bui Phan Thu Hang, Vo Lam and T R  Preston*

Angiang University, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Vietnam
bpthang@agu.edu.vn
^*UTA (Colombia), Socorro, Santander, Colombia

Abstract

Thirty weaned crossbred rabbits (New Zealand x local female), 8 weeks of age were used to evaluate the effects of paddy rice supplementation in basal diets of fresh water spinach or water hyacinth leaves. The design was a 2*5 factorial the factors being: (i) Water spinach (WS) or mixtures of water spinach and water hyacinth leaves (WHL); and (ii) levels of paddy rice (PR) supplementation (0, 5, 10, 20 and 35 g/day). The water spinach and water hyacinth leaves were offered ad libitum. Growth rates and DM feed conversion were better when water spinach was the basal diet and were improved as the offer level of paddy rice was raised with the optimum at 20 g/day on water spinach and 10 g/day when the basal diet was a mixture of water hyacinth leaves with water spinach (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Growth rates of rabbits fed basal diets of water spinach or water spinach and water hyacinth leaves with increasing levels of paddy rice supplementation

Key words: Feed conversion, forages,