Effects of Gestational Maternal Undernutrition on Growth, Carcass Composition and Meat Quality of Rabbit Offspring

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in order to evaluate the effects of gestational undernutrition of rabbit does on growth, carcass composition and meat quality of the offsprings. Thirty primiparous non lactating rabbit does were artificially inseminated and randomly divided in three treatment groups: Control (C; fed to 100% of maintenance requirements throughout gestation, n = 10), early undernourished (EU; fed to 50% of maintenance requirements during days 7–19 of gestation, n = 10) and late undernourished (LU; fed to 50% of maintenance requirements during days 20-27 of gestation, n = 10). During the 4th week of the gestation period, LU does significantly lost weight compared to C and EU groups (P<0.05). At kindling, C does produced litters with higher proportions of stillborn kits (P<0.05) while the total litter size (alive and stillborn kits) was not different among groups (10.7, 12.8 and 12.7 kits in C, EU and LU groups, respectively). Kit birth weight tended to be lower in the LU group. During fattening, body weight and feed intake were not different among offsprings of the three experimental groups. Moreover, the maternal undernutrition did not have any impact on carcass composition of the offsprings in terms of carcass parts and internal organs weights as well as meat quality of L. lumborum muscle (pH24, colour, water holding capacity and shear values) at slaughter (70 days of age). Therefore, it can be concluded that the gestational undernutrition of the mother does not have detrimental effects on the productive and quality traits of the offsprings.

Influence of gestational maternal feed restriction on growth performance and meat quality of rabbit offsprings

“…Meat quality traits measured were also not affected by maternal undernutrition (P > 0.05, Table 4). Similar results were obtained by Symeon et al (2015) when maternal feed restriction to 50% of maintenance energy requirements compared with 100% of maintenance energy requirements was applied to rabbit does. However, in sheep, maternal feed restriction during gestation increased offsprings' IMF (Zhu et al, 2006), increased fat-to-lean ratio (Daniel et al, 2007) and decreased muscle weight and number of fast fibres in longissimus dorsi and vastus lateralis muscles in neonatal lambs with possible implications for subsequent meat quality (Fahey et al, 2005).…”

“…On the other hand, Rommers et al (2004) and Rizzi et al (2008) did not report any effect of gestational feed restriction on kit birth weight probably because of the less severe feed restriction applied, 1.35 times maintenance requirements and 80% of ad libitum consumption, respectively, compared with the restriction level of 75% of maintenance requirements in the present study. In previous research from our team in the same experimental facilities and with does of the same genetic origin, we detected only an insignificant slight decrease in kit birth weight even though the does were undernourished more severely, to 50% of maintenance requirements during gestation (Symeon et al, 2015). This difference may be Table 2 Effect of gestational feed restriction on BW (g), cumulative feed intake (g/doe), kindling and weaning performance of does C = does fed ad libitum (n = 13); R = does restricted fed to 75% of maintenance energy requirements from day 7 to day 26 of gestation (n = 12, except from measurements taken at 14 and 35 days of lactation period where n = 10); GD = gestation day.…”

“…attributed mainly to the different daily feed allowance of the control groups (ad libitum in the present study v. 100% of energy maintenance requirements in Symeon et al, 2015). Therefore, it can be concluded that discrepancies among studies in the literature may be attributed not only to different levels of feed restriction, different environmental conditions, number of parturition or genotype, but to the different daily feed intake of the control groups as well.…”

“…Simultaneous gestation and lactation alters the development of muscle fibres in the 29-day-old rabbit offspring; however, this effect is transient and no differences in muscle features have been demonstrated at commercial slaughter age of 70 days (Gondret et al, 1997). Previous research from our team has shown that a 50% maternal feed restriction during gestation compared with a daily feed allowance of 100% of maintenance requirements had no effect on performance and meat quality characteristics in does' offsprings (Symeon et al, 2015). However, no other published studies on effects of maternal feed restriction on performance and meat quality traits of offsprings in rabbits are available in the literature.…”

Effect of gestational and lactational exposure to heat stress on performance in rabbits

“…Nonetheless, stimulus or insult acting during critical periods of foetal growth and development may result in developmental adaptations that permanently change the structure, physiology and metabolism of the offspring (Barker, 1995;Lau and Rogers, 2004;McMillen et al, 2004;Guilloteau and Waterland, 2005;Langley-Evans et al, 2005). This concept, named "foetal origins hypothesis", has recently been the subject of several research works (Symeon et al, 2015). Previous studies show that upsetting factors (non-thermal) can permanently change growth (Foxcroft et al, 2006(Foxcroft et al, , 2009, post-absorptive metabolism (Chen et al, 2010;Pinney and Simmons, 2010) and body composition (Barker et al, 1993;Roseboom et al, 2006).…”