Using dried kitchen food wastes as untraditional feed in growing rabbit's diets

Abstract

Abstract Background Kitchen food wastes (KFW) are food lost from human especially from hotels, hospitals, cafeterias and home, could be alternative feed resources and create the attention of researchers to process these wastes and recycling it as animal feeding not only to reduce the use of expensive feed ingredients but also to decrease the environmental pollution. The main objective of this study was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary KFW inclusion on growth performance, digestibility, carcass traits, and some blood biochemical parameters of growing New Zealand White rabbits. Results The results showed that rabbits fed on diets containing 30% KFW achieved significantly (P < 0.05) higher daily weight gain (22.61 g) than the control (20.79 g) and there were no difference between diets 10% and 20%, and the lowest daily gain was with diet 40%. The highest organic matter (OM) and crude protein (CP) digestibility were recorded in rabbits fed on a diet containing 30% KFW (64.08 and 64.29%, respectively), while the lowest was observed in 40% group (61.11 and 55.54%, respectively). Diets containing KFW decreased caecal ammonia nitrogen (NH3–N) and increased propionate up to 30% substitution. The addition of KFW to rabbits diets had no significant effect (P < 0.05) on serum globulin, glucose, ALT, and AST values and increased significantly (P < 0.05) serum total protein, albumin, triglycerides, cholesterol and creatinine. Conclusion It can be concluded that the best growth performance and economical feed efficiency was observed in rabbits fed on a diet containing 30% KFW and surpassing all treated groups and achieved the best body weight gain.

Keywords

• Rabbits
• Kitchen food wastes
• Performance
• Digestibility
• Caecal
• Carcass and blood parameters