Rabbit nutrition

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Rabbit nutrition
General information: 
Europe tops the world in rabbit production. 
Gestation period is 31 days. Birth wt. is 60 grams. 
Meat rabbit – 2.4 kg at 10 weeks old. Adult wt. in New Zealand white is 1-5.5 kg and in Californian breed is 3.5-4.8 kg. 
 Total lactation yield is 7 kg and peak yield is 280 g/day.
 Angora rabbit are used for fur
 production
Attributes of rabbit for efficient food production.
1.	Rapid growth rate (40-45 g/ day).
2.	High reproductive potential (within 24 hrs can rebreed but allowed after 7 days).
High proliferation. (Litter size average is 7, there are 30-50 kits/year).
4.	High feed conversion (FCR: 2.5-3.0).
Hares- Unlike rabbits, hares are born fully haired with eyes open and can run within few minutes of birth.
Rabbit- New born kits/bunnies are hairless with eye closed. Start developing hairs by 4 days and eyes open by 10th day.
1.	Rabbitary- It is rearing of rabbits.
2.	Fryer rabbits- raised for meat production.
3.	Their meat is low in fats and cholesterol.
4.	Rabbits are susceptible to heat stress as they do not have sweat glands (30-320C.
5.	Rabbit is a non ruminant herbivore.
6.	German Angora, White Angora, New Zealand White, White Giant and and Soviet Chinchilla are important breeds. 
Nutrition and feeding of rabbits:
Purposes of rearing – 
Rabbits are raised in India for laboratory purposed production of meat, wool and fur. 
 Rabbit are non-ruminant herbivore, simple stomach, 
It is hindgut fermenter (caecum and colon) having voluminous caecum and colon for growth and multiplication of micro flora which help in the digestion of fibrous feeds and NPN. 
 Upper lip helps in the prehension of feed.
FIBRE!
 In the wild, rabbits mainly eat grass
–	with a few leaves, vegetable matter and occasionally bits of twig & bark
 Rabbits digest fibre poorly because of selective separation and excretion of large particles in the hindgut
Of the forage eaters like Guinea pig, sheep, goat and cattle , rabbit has poorest ability to digest fibre as it takes only 30 hrs for majority of foods to pass through GIT.
A diet containing 15% CF shd be there in rabbit which promote intestinal motility and minimize intestinal disease.
Diet low in fibre increases incidence of intestinal problems like enterotoxaemia
High fibre diet (>20% CF) result in increased incidence of caecal impaction and mucoid enteritis
Complete feed shd contain 14-18% CF; 16-21% ADF; 27-42% NDF
Coprophagy/ caecotrophy/ refection/ pseudo-rumination
It is the inherent property in rabbits. 
Coprophagy is practices by the wild rabbits during the day time while they are in burrows.
It helps in the supply of B vitamins and essential AA’s and VFA’s, which are produced by bacterial fermentation in caecum. 
Two types of faeces are there.
1.	Hard pellets 50-55% DM excreted in day time.
2.	Soft faeces- 30-35% DM. they are mostly excreted in night and these are eaten by rabbits.
Rabbits
Let’s talk about droppings!
Left hand side:
Sticky droppings
or ‘caecotrophs’
Right hand side:
Hard droppings
Hard droppings from a healthy rabbit are perfectly spherical
Not tear-drop shaped
Rabbit Digestion
Rabbit eats fibrous
food like
grass or hay
Fibrous material is
divided into Digestible and Indigestible fibre, in the gut
Bacteria in the caecum breaks down the digestible fibre
Then excreted as sticky droppings
Rabbit eats sticky droppings direct from their bottom
Sticky droppings are re-digested and essential nutrients extracted.
Food quickly passes through stomach & small intestine
Digestible fibre enters a large ‘appendix’ (caecum)
Indigestible fibre
helps gut motion
And are excreted as normal
hard droppings.
Nutrient requirement-
Energy- for maintenance – 120 Kcal DE/kg body wt with an increment of 40 Kcal for each additional 0.5 kg body wt (440 Kcal for 5 kg body wt). 
 It is 125-130 Kcal/kg W0.75. A ration having 2200 Kcal ME/kg is optimum for adults. 
 In case of pregnant and lactating does requirement increases to twice and thrice, respectively.
Nutrient requirement of rabbit fed ad libitum (% or amount per kg of diet)
	Nutrient	Maintenance 	Gestation	growth	lactation
	DE (Kcal) 	2100	2500	2500	2500
	CP%	12	15	16	17
	DCP%	9	11	12	13
	TDN%	55	58	65	70
	CF%	14	10-12	10-12	10-12
	Fat%	2	2	2	2
					
NRC, 1977
Protein: 
It is 15% CP in the diet. 
 For creep ration it is 30%. 
 About 10-20% of total protein requirement is obtained through caecotrophy. 
Glycine is dietary essential for rabbits. 
After 8 weeks of age quality of protein is of little importance because of corprophagy. 
In rabbits raised for fur, S amino acids are highly required.
	Feed ingredients	PERCENT
	Ground cereals (maize/sorghum)	30
	Groundnut cake (decorticated)	16
	Wheat bran	52
	Mineral Mixture	01
	Salt	01
CF- a diet having 13% CF (complete pelleted) is satisfactory for all classes of rabbits. In creep ration it is 2%.
Fat - It is 1-8% in the diet.
Minerals - daily 2 g calcium in growing and 2.5 g in lactating fulfills the requirement. 
Fe store (initially at birth) in the liver of bunny (young one) is very high. 
As the milk contains less iron, so at the end of suckling young ones may be anaemic. 
Cu deficiency also leads to anaemia. 
Salt requirement is 1%.
Composition of a pelleted diet mixture for rabbit.
	Feed ingredients	PERCENT
	Barseem meal	40
	Barley grain ground	18
	Maize grain ground	5
	Wheat bran	14
	Soybean oil meal	17
	Linseed oil meal	5
	Salt	1
Vitamins – normally they get good amount of carotene and other vitamins from green hays and feeds.
Water – in adults 200-300 ml water daily, lactating doe may consume water up to equal to their body wt.
 It depends up on water content of feed also.
Feeds of rabbits - cereals, legumes, cereal and legume by-products, green fodders (Berseem, cowpea, lucerne), root crops like turnip, carrot ; some fodder tree leaves and some animal by products may be used.
Feeding of rabbits – depending upon the physiological status of rabbits normally 50-70% of their DMI is from roughages and rest from concentrates. 
 Concentrate mixture should have 15% DCP and 70% TDN.
As maintenance ration – 
2.4-2.5% of body weight as conc. and 10% of body weight as green or 2.5% as hay.
As growing & breeding ration-
3% of body weight as concentrate and 12-15% of body weight as green or 3.4% as hay
As lactating ration – 
6-7% of body weight as conc. and 14-16% of body weight as green or 3-4% as hay
In complete diets – lucerne meal is preferred over berseem meal, maize is preferred over sorghum and ground nut cake is preferred over linseed oil.
Adult Doe: 
It is usually- fed restricted quantity of food to prevent overfatness. 
If fertility is.poor in maiden does which have been on a restricted regime, "flusliing ration" for 4 days before and one day after mating has been shown to improve fertility considerably. 
A restricted (140 g/day-Californian does) level during pregnancy followed by unrestricted feeding during lactation resulted in a higher milk yield and better growth rate in their young in the first week of life. 
Food and water intakes usually decrease sharply on the last day before parturition. 
Soaked Bengal gram (50 &/day) can be given to lactating does for better performance. 
As lactation begins food intake increases to a maximum after 20-30 days. 
Lactation: 
The rabbit is unusual among domestic mammals because the young are suckled only once per day usually in the early morning and is completed in 2-5 minutes. 
Occasionally some does will permit their young to suckle more than once in the first 2-3 days of life. 
The doe's milk production follows a typical mammalian lactation curve,reaching a peak at 18-21 days and then decreasing rapidly until weaning takes place at 3 to 5 weeks
Digestive disorders-
Enteritis / Enterotoxaemia – 
Major cause of mortality (10-20% mortality)
Inflammation of mucosa of digestive tract / intestinal and caecal lining – diarrhea, mortality,
 Major type of enteritis is enterotoxaemia Caused by pathogenic bacteria Clostridium spiroforme and toxigenic strains of Escherichia coli, 
Occur due to carbohydrate overload in the hindgut, leading to upset of normal gut flora referred as Dysbiosis
Cause:	Diets high in fermentable starch and low in fiber responsible, hyper fermentation, drop in caecal pH.
Prevention:	feed highly lignified poorly digestible fibre like straw (15% fibre). 
Fibre absorb toxins which are then excreted, stimulate gut motility, low in fermentable carbohydrate.
Copper sulphate @ 250ppm
Ascorbic acid inhibits toxins 
Addition of probiotics (microencapsulated lactic acid bacteria and yeast culture
Fur chewing (Angora rabbits). Low fiber diet is the reason. Pull fur from cage mates and consume it. Gut blockage/Wool block/large hair ball in stomach, off feed, starve to death.
Prevention:	Increase fibre and protein level or particle size of fibre (hay/straw)
Treatment: 200g of magnesium oxide per quintal of feed 
Early weaners are more sensitive to change in diet so avoid carbohydrate overload
Ingestive Behaviour
During the first 3 weeks of life the young are fed only once in every 24 hours by their mother.
 Five to 15 ml of milk are sucked by the newborn within 2 to 3 min. Rabbit milk contains 20-24% fat. 
Adult domestic rabbits, on the contrary, are more continuous eaters and they take one or two meals every hour throughout the 24-hours period.
From 16 to 18 days, young rabbits begin to eat small quantities of solid feed in addition to their mother’s milk. 
The water intake of the young rabbit is closely related to intake of solid feed. 
The feeding behavior thus changes quickly as the young rabbit moves from a single meal of milk per day (from birth to 15 days old) to a large number of solid and liquid meals 
Caecotrophy begins in the young rabbit at about 3 weeks of age, i.e when the animals begin to eat solid food in addition to their mother’s milk. 
Feeding of Angora Rabbits
The quantity of feed ,required by Angora rabbit depends upon the age, body weight, season and physiological status of the animal. 
Adult, non-breeding, non-lactating does, and non-breeding male rabbits can be fed concentrate at 120-150 g per day, preferably in the morning. 
This feed should contain about' 14-16% DCP. 
Does in advanced pregnancy and lactating stages will need about 200 g of quality balanced concentrate feed containing 18-20% DCP and 12-16% of crude fibre. 
The growing young Angora should be given 80-100 g of good-quality feed.
 The nutrition of Angora rabbit must be very good as the animal has to produce wool protein throughout the year. 
There is a higher requirement of sulphur-containing amino acids, e.g, methionine. 
Roughage supplement in the feed is highly desirable to avoid wool eating and formation of hair-balls in the stomach. 
Improper and inadequate nutrition of rabbits will lead to rough coats, poor wool production, lack of body growth, deformed skeleton, poor reproductive efficiency and higher rate of mortality.
Feeding the good bacteria 
in the rabbit
Rabbits cannot digest their food without the help of 
beneficial bacteria and other microbes
Maintaining the balance of bacteria in their digestive system keeps rabbits alive
Feeding rabbits the right sort of food is therefore one of THE most important aspects of rabbit care to ensure healthy, happy bunnies!
–	Choice of food is therefore critical
Commercial feed additives containing microencapsulated lactic acid bacteria and yeast culture; organic acids and enzymes are helpful in preventing enterotoxaemia.
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