A study was conducted in Northern Province of Rwanda, from the College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Busogo Campus located in Musanze district to evaluate the effect of feed type on rabbit growth in rabbit intensification systems in Rwanda. The Complete Randomized Design (CRD) was used and data were collected on rabbit growth weekly for a period of 12 weeks. The experiment was composed of three treatments replicated ten times. The treatments included three types of feeds namely; cabbage combined with Mucuna pruriens added to local forage (I), cabbages combined with Leucaena leucocephala added to local forage (II) and a control composed of other varieties of locally available forage, such as Bidens pilosa, Crassocephalum vitellium and Galinsoga parviflora (III) which was considered as the control (Farmers practice). The feeds were given to ten rabbits separated in individual cages, and each rabbit was considered a replicate. Water was given ad libitum. One month old rabbits (weaners) were used and data were collected after one week of adaptation for 12 weeks. The results showed that the mean of weight gain after 12 weeks was 783.3 g, 760.7 g and 705.7 g for feed type I, II and III respectively. The difference between means of feed types after 12 weeks was not significant (p > 0.5), which implied that rabbit growth did not depend on the feed type. The mean weight gain after 8 weeks was 707.5 g, 661.4 g and 577.1 g for feed type I, II and III respectively. At 8 weeks, the difference between means of feed types was significant (p < 0.5), which implied that rabbits fed on Mucuna pruriens combined with cabbage and local forage were growing faster than rabbits from other treatments at 8 weeks. The researchers recommended that farmers should be facilitated with feeding materials by the concerned institutions. Training of rabbit farmers and further researches on locally available feeding materials were also given as recommendations at the end of this study.
Agriculture is central to human well-being and sustainable development [
Rabbits have greater potential of contributing to food security and income generation, as they are easily integrated in farming systems, because they can convert plant materials with low nutritive value, to high quality meat, in a small space and with low investment; while also providing manure from feces and urine which is rich in nutrients, and can be used to nurture the soil [
The experiment was carried out at the farm of the College of Agriculture, Animal sciences and Veterinary medicine, Busogo Campus located in Northern Province, Musanze district. The College of Agriculture, Animal Sciences and Veterinary Medicine (CAVM) is one of the 6 colleges of the University of Rwanda (UR), created in 2013 after merging all former Institutions of Higher Learning [
One month old rabbits (weaners) from the New Zealand breed were raised in individual cages and labeled for identification (as presented in
of feed (500 grams) was equally distributed to all rabbits per day for all treatments. There were three treatments replicated ten times, as each rabbit was considered a replicate. These included three types of feeds namely; cabbage combined with Mucuna pruriens added to local forage (I), cabbages combined with Leucaena leucocephala added to local forage (II) and a control composed of other varieties of locally available forage, such as Bidens pilosa, Crassocephalum vitellium and Galinsoga parviflora (III) which was considered as the control (Farmers practice). Rabbits were weighed (in grams) on weekly basis using a weighing scale to study rabbit growth and data were collected for 12 weeks.
After data collection, statistical analysis was carried out by one-way ANOVA, using SPSS software version 20 and MINITAB 14 to evaluate the significant differences among means of all tested parameters at 95% level of confidence. Further statistical validity of the differences among treatment means were estimated using the Least Significance Difference (LSD) method.
The rabbit growth was considered by comparing the weight gained by all experimental rabbits from each treatment. Means, standard deviations, ANOVA tables and boxplots were presented for weight gain after 12 weeks and after 8 weeks.
The results show that rabbits under treatment of feed type I have higher mean of weight gain (783.3 g) with less standard deviation (123.2 g), followed by those under feed type II having the mean of weight gain of 760.7 g with 197.1 g of standard deviation. The rabbits under feed type III (control) gained less weight (705.7) with higher standard deviation (203.5 g) compared to other treatments. The results are presented on
The above graph shows better results from feed type I, which is composed by local forage + cabbage + Mucuna pruriens; followed by feed type II, composed by local forage + cabbage + Leucaena lecocephala and lastly feed type III composed by local forage only. The daily growth rates in this study were 9 g for feed type I, 8 g for feed type II and 8 for feed type III and these are comparable to the growth rate of 10 - 20 g/day in tropical countries [
The difference between means of feed types was not significant (p > 0.5), and this implied that rabbit growth did not depend on the feed type after 12 weeks.
The results showed that after 8 weeks, rabbits under treatment of feed type I, have higher mean of weight gain (707.5 g) with less standard deviation (83.5 g), followed by those under feed type II, having the mean of weight gain of 661.4 g with a standard deviation of 149.3 g. The rabbits under feed type III (control) gained less weight (577.1) with higher standard deviation (152.6 g) compared to other treatments. The results are presented on
After 8 weeks, the average daily weight gain for rabbits under feed type I is 12 g, followed by the rabbits under feed type II with daily weight gain of 11 g and lastly 10 g for rabbits under feed type III (control). Comparing those numbers with the ones presented above for 12 weeks, they show that the weight gain decreases with time with the same feeds.
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The highest averages weight gains were 28.42 g after 8 weeks in the experiment that used the conventional feed as control and in combination with the indigenous yeast strains [
The difference between means of feed types after 8 weeks is significant (p < 0.5), which implied that rabbit growth at 8 weeks depended on the feed type.
The results for Least Significant Difference (LSD) showed that the difference between means of feed type I and II was not significant but the difference between means of feed type I and III was significant. The difference between the means of feed type II and III was also not significant.
There is a high demand for rabbit meat on the market in Rwanda, and manure from rabbits is still not used by many farmers because they don’t know how to find it in enough quantity and how to use it appropriately. Mucuna pruriens and Leucaena Leucocephala can be used in rabbit feeding especially during the first 8 weeks of age to stimulate the growth. Rabbit health and feeding challenges must be addressed to keep rabbit farming profitable to farmers and therefore, making a positive impact on the entire agriculture sector in Rwanda.
More research on the effect of locally available forage on rabbit growth should be carried out.
The authors acknowledge the World Bank for funding this research through African Centre of Excellence in Agro ecology and Livelihood systems (ACALISE). The authors would like to express their gratitude to the University of Rwanda, College of Agriculture, animal sciences and veterinary medicine (CAVM) for providing the premises where this research was conducted and Uganda Martyrs University (UMU) for facilitating this research.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
Gatesi, J.F., Ayuke, F. and Musinguzi, S.P. (2023) Rabbit Intensification Systems in Rwanda: Feeding Influence and Growth. Journal of Agricultural Chemistry and Environment, 12, 44-49. https://doi.org/10.4236/jacen.2023.121004