EFFECT OF CARROT (DAUCUS CAROTA) LEAVES ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND NUTRIENTS DIGESTIBILITY OF GROWER MONGREL RABBIT

Abstract

A total of twelve (12) mixed breeds and sexes of grower rabbits were used to investigate the effect of varying level of supplementation of carrot leaves on their growth performance and nutrients digestibility. The study was conducted at Teaching and Research Farm of Animal Science Department, Kano University of Science and Technology, Wudil. The rabbits were randomly allocated to four dietary treatments with three rabbit per replicate. The control treatment (T1) contained 0% carrot leaves while treatment T2, T3 and T4 had 5%,10% and 15% carrot leaves dietary respectively. Clean water and feed were offered ad libtum to the rabbits and the record of their feed intake and growth performance were taken for 8 weeks. At the end of the 7th week, a nutrient digestibility trial was carried out. The result showed that there was no significant (p>0.05) difference in final body weight, total weight gained, total feed Intake, average daily feed intake and feed conversion ratio. However, their values differed. Final body weight, total weight gained and average daily weight gained of the treatments groups were all higher than values of control group. Total feed intake and average daily feed intake were followed same trend. While feed conversion ratio showed that T4(4.14%) had the lowest value and control group had the highest value. The digestibility of ether extract, crude fibre and ash showed significance (p<0.05) difference across the treatments. In ether extract T2(13.31%) had the highest value than the other treatments while the lowest value was observed in T1(9.84). For Crude fibre T3(25.72%) and T4 (25.26%) were significantly differed with T2; However, T1 was not significantly different (p>0.05) from other treatments. While for ash T2(11.79%) differed significantly from T3, T1 and T4. Hence it is concluded that carrot leaves can be supplemented up to 15% in grower rabbit diet with no detrimental effect on growth performance and nutrients digestibility.