PERFORMANCE AND NUTRIENT DIGESTIBILITY OF RABBITS FED FERMENTED AND UNFERMENTED COCOA POD HUSK

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the performance and nutrient digestibility of rabbits fed cocoa pod husk (CPH). Thirty weaner rabbits of about five weeks old were used for the study. They were allotted to five treatment consisting of three replicates of two rabbits each. Diet T, served as the control with 0%CPH, Diet T2 and T3  contained 30% unfermented and fermented CPH respectively. The experiment lasted for ten (10) weeks. The results showed a significant increase (P < 0.05) in feed intake, body weight gain and feed conversion ration of rabbits fed increasing levels of inclusion of fermented and unfermented CPH in experimental diets. The apparent nutrient digestibility also improved with increasing levels of fermented and unfermented CPH in the diets. However, rabbits performed better on the fermented CPH than the unfermented CPH based diets.