EFFECTS OF BREED ON MORPHOMETRIC TRAITS OF THREE BREEDS OF RABBIT FED TIGERNUT PELLETIZED DIETS

Résumé

An 100-days experimental research was conducted to evaluate the effect of breed on morphometric traits of one hundred and forty six (146) weaned rabbits from forty-eight (48) does and twelve (12) bucks consisting of three different breeds namely; Hyla, Newzealand white and Dutch. The rabbits were equally allotted into treatments comprising of all the experimental breeds. Tiger nut (Cyperus esculentus) was mixed with other feed ingredients to form four (4) experimental diet of; Treatment 0, 1, 2 and 3 with the inclusion levels of 0(control), 10, 20 and 30g respectively of tiger nut per 1kg of feed. The rabbits were randomly allotted to the experimental diets in 3x4 factorial arrangements in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD). Body linear measurements data were taken on the 146 rabbit kittens at first and fifth week (weaning) as follow; body length (BL), height at withers (HW), ear length (EL), heart girth (HG), shoulder to tail length (STL), fore-leg length (FL), tail length (TL), rump height (RH). The results showed that tiger nut diets recorded significant (P < 0.05) effect across all the inclusion levels on almost the linear body parameters both for first and fifth week likewise effect of breed on morphometric measurements of rabbit showed significant (P < 0.05) influence on body length and other morphometric traits at week 1 while at week 5 there existed no significant (P>0.05) effect of the breeds on morphometric traits except for EL. However, at week 1, the interaction of 0, 10, 20, 30g inclusion with the three breeds, has a significant (P < 0.05) effect on BL, STL, TL, HL, HW, FL, HL and HW, RUMP. It was observed that NZW has the highest significant difference at 30g inclusion and this may be as a result of high inclusion level of tiger nut in the tested meal. However, observing 10g interaction with the breeds of rabbit at week 5, there was significant (P < 0.05) influence on EL, STL and FL. At 30g inclusion level in relations with the breeds showed there was no significant (p>0.05) differences existed among all the morphometric traits except for TL. It was concluded that breed had a significant higher performance on linear body measurements of rabbit at 30g tiger nut inclusion level. Based on the results of this research, the inclusion level of tiger nut based diet at 30% is recommended for optimum performance at first week for Newzealand white, followed by Hyla and Dutch.