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A study of the physiological responses and energy expenditure of goats was carried out from June 1999 to May 2000 by conducting two experiments: one on bucks maintained on stall feeding in autumn 1999 (Expt 1) followed by year-round grazing on native ranges over three seasons: monsoon, winter and summer (Expt 2). Physiological responses and energy expenditure (EE) measurements of housed and grazing goats were recorded at 06.00 h and 14.00 h for 5 consecutive days in each season. Goats were fixed with a face mask and meteorological balloon for collection of expired air and measurement of EE. Respiration rate (RR) at 06.00 h was similar in all seasons (14 respiration/min) except in the monsoon, where a significantly (P<0.05) higher value (26 respiration/min) was recorded. At 14.00 h, RR was higher in monsoon and summer (81 and 91 respiration/min) than in winter (52 respiration/min). Irrespective of the season, heart rate (HR) was higher at 14.00 h (86 beat/min) than at 06.00 h (64 beat/min). The rise of rectal temperature (RT) from morning (06.00 h) to peak daily temperature (14.00 h) was 0.9 °C in housed goats in autumn and 1.0, 2.1 and 2.0 °C in grazing goats during monsoon, winter and summer, respectively. The mean value was 1.7 °C. Skin temperature (ST) was lowest in winter (30.1 °C) and highest at 14.00 h in summer (40.3 °C). Energy expenditure of goats at 06.00 h was 32.7 W in winter and significantly (P<0.05) increased to 52.0 W in summer and 107.8 W in monsoon. At 14.00 h, EE was 140.2 W in winter and increased to 389.0 W and 391.3 W respectively in monsoon and summer. It is concluded that monsoon and summer are both stressful seasons in semi-arid regions. Animals should be protected from direct solar radiation during the hottest hours of the day to ameliorate the effect of heat stress.

Growth performance, nutrient digestibility and changes in caecal fermentation pattern was studied on four groups of 8 grower rabbits (soviet chinchilla) each, fed on diets containing 17 to 18% CP and 10.4-11.00 MJ DE kg -1 feed. The complete diets contained mulberry leaves along with other feed ingredients at 0 (LH), 15 (ML15), 30 (ML30) and 45% (ML45) levels. In LH diet ground lucerne hay was added at 15% of the diet as roughage source. The diets were uniform in other nutritional parameters except the higher amount of hemicellulose (18.7 and 16.5%) in LH and ML15 diets. The performance of grower rabbits was better (p<0.05) on LH and ML15 diets in terms of twelve weeks weight (kg), total gain (g), average daily gain (ADG) and feed efficiency (%). Different levels of mulberry leaves in the diet did not influence the dry matter intake. Digestibility of nutrients for DM, OM, CP, NDF and energy was uniform in all the diets but the digestibility of CF, ADF and cellulose was higher (p<0.01) on ML15, ML30 and ML 45 diets. The hemicellulose digestibility was significantly higher (p<0.01) on LH (44.52%) and ML15 (48.00%) compared to ML30 (33.54%) and ML 45 (39.17%) diets. The nitrogen retention (% of intake) was higher (p<0.05) in LH and ML15 diets than ML30 and ML45 diets. The caecum weight as percent of intestine weight consistently increased (p<0.05) with increasing content of mulberry leaves in diets. Total nitrogen and NH 3 -N was higher on LH and ML15 diets. It is concluded that incorporation of mulberry leaves can replace Lucerne hay in complete rabbit feed (15% in diet). Even at higher level i.e. 30 and 45% of the diet mulberry leaves based complete feed gave promising results.