Effect of dietary levels of arginine on the growth performance and immunity of growing rabbits

Abstract

The present Study was conducted at Environmental Studies and Research Institute farm, University of Sadat City and the Regional Center for Food and Feeds to determine the effect of the using different levels of arginine on the performance and immunity of growing rabbits. Forty WNZ growing rabbits of both sexes , aged 5 weeks with an average initial weight of 750 g were used in the experiment . The animals were divided into 5 groups, each group has 4 replicates each. All animals were individually housed in galvanized wire cages with feeder and automatic nipple drinker and kept under the same managerial conditions. The results obtained were: The final body weight of rabbit fed T4 was insignificantly higher than the other groups T1, T2, T3 andT5 being (2500.0g vs. 2280.0; 2487.50; 2446.87 and 2316.43g, respectively.), Also, rabbits group fed dietary arginine by 0.4g/kg diet (T3) achieved the best total gain value (1758.13g ) compared with control(T1) and other experimental groups( T2;T4;T5 ) being (1548.57 and 1740.63 ; 1715.63 ; 1563.57 , respectively . But there is no significant differences in final body weight gain between control and experimental treatments which supplemented with different levels of dietary arginine. Rabbits group fed dietary arginine by 0.6g/kg diet (T4) significantly (p < 0.05) consumed the highest total FI (1081.25 and 451.25 g), meanwhile, rabbits group fed dietary arginine by 0.8 g/kg diet (T5) significantly (p < 0.05) achieved the lowest feed intake (333.13g) .Insignificant differences between control and other experimental groups which ranged from 3.25 to 3.64 and no cleared effect for dietary arginine on FCR. Therefore, it can be concluded that dietary arginine by 0.4g/kg diet (T3) achieved better growth performance of growing rabbits.