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Matching Livestock Systems with Available Resources |
MEKARN Regional Conference 2007 |
Sixteen New Zealand rabbits with 3.5 - 4.5 kg average BW were used in a completely randomized design to study use of Calliandra foliage in combination with water spinach (WS) and guinea grass (GG) as basal diet. There were four treatments: Control (CTL), containing guinea grass + concentrates at 3% of body weight; WS + GG ad libitum (WS-GG); WS + Calliandra ad libitum (WS-C); and WS, water spinach ad.libitum. The trial lasted 50 days. 24 weaned rabbits born from mothers in experiment 1 with 450-500 g of BW at 30 days of age received the same treatments as in experiment 1 over a period of 80 days.
The results showed that, the Calliandra contains high CP content (230 g/kg dry matter (DM). The live weight loss of the rabbit dams after 30 days were - 300, -600, -500, -500g for CTL, WS-GG, WS-C and WS, respectively. The survival rates of the offspring to weaning at 30 days (experiment 1) were better for CTL and WS-C (82 and 83%) than for WS-GG and WS (62 and 72%). The live weight gains of the growing rabbits were 19.5, 16.6, 18.8 and 17.2 g/day and the feed conversion ratios were 8.0, 5.5, 6.7 and 6.2 kg DM/kg gain for the four treatments, respectively.
It is concluded that Calliandra foliage can be used as supplementary for rabbits with no loss in performance.